Prayer is one of the spiritual disciplines every Christian struggles with. There are many reasons for it: not knowing how to pray, not having enough time to pray, laziness, unbelief, etc. At its core, prayer is the vehicle we use to communicate with our heavenly Father and access information he wants us to know. It is also the means we have to petition and make our requests known to God. We must pray because we rely on God for our every need and not on ourselves. Whether you struggle with prayer or not, today, I would like to encourage you to persevere in this discipline by looking at the prayers of King Hezekiah in the book of Isaiah and the circumstances surrounding his life.
The book of Isaiah is mainly composed of prophecies that the Lord gave to his people through the mouth of Isaiah His prophet. Many of those prophecies were for a faraway future (like the one about Christ) and many were for the nearer future (Babylonian captivity of Israel). However, the prophecies get interrupted by the story of Hezekiah, king of Judah and the siege by the Assyrians. This tells me it is a story I must pay attention to. Before we get into the prayers of Hezekiah, let me give you a little bit of context. The Assyrians had captured Samaria and eventually deported the Israelites to Assyria so it was just a matter of time before the Assyrians turn their focus on Judah. A few years later, the now king of Assyria, Sennacherib attacked all of Judah’s fortified cities and captured them. In a situation like this, it is evident that the nation who’s seen its fortified cities captured will eventually be exterminated or taken over by the dominating power. This was the predicament Hezekiah found himself in when Sennacherib took over the fortified cities of Judah. Hezekiah, unlike many of his predecessor is a king who “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord just as his father David had done” (2 Kings 18:3). It is because of his obedience to the Lord that he was spared many times from the attacks of surrounding nations. However, in this scenario, all hope seems to be lost because King Hezekiah and the people of Judah receive a message from Sennacherib through his field commander. In the message, Sennacherib tells Hezekiah to stop rebelling against him, to surrender himself because he is not strong enough to defeat him and he cannot enlist the help of other nations like Egypt because such nations are powerless before him. Sennacherib adds that even the Lord his God cannot deliver him (Hezekiah) from his hand because it is the Lord who told him (Sennacherib) to come out against Judah. The message spoken through the mouth of the field commander was also putting the Lord God at the same level as the gods of other nations that the Assyrians had destroyed so they became proud in their thinking. Do yourself a favour and read the chapters of Isaiah 36 through 38 to learn more about the context because my paraphrasing is not doing it justice.
Upon hearing this message, King Hezekiah immediately put on sackcloth, tore his robe and went into the temple of the Lord (Isaiah 37:1). His first response was to go talk to God about the situation he was facing, it was not about how to strategize and fight, how to come up with solutions, no, he went into the presence of the Lord because he knew he was powerless without the Lord. So he humbled himself and went before the Lord. As he went, he also sent a message to Isaiah the prophet to tell him that it was a day of mourning and sadness and to have him intercede to the Lord on behalf of the remnant of Judah with this saying “it may be that the Lord your God will hear the words of the field commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to ridicule the living God…” (Isaiah 37:4). Hezekiah here teaches us that no matter how dire a situation can be, our first response is to humble ourselves and bring it to our Father in heaven. We must make a conscious effort to look upward and not inward or outward. This act pleased the Lord because he sent a quick response to the messengers Hezekiah had sent to Isaiah by telling him to not be afraid of Sennacherib and the word he proclaimed against the Lord because the Lord would destroy him. What a quick answer to prayer! As promised by God, He turned the plans of Sennacherib who did not go to fight against Jerusalem, instead, he went to fight Egypt who was marching against Assyria (Isaiah 37:9). However, as he went to fight against Egypt, Sennacherib left a letter addressed to Hezekiah through his messengers. In the letter, Sennacherib was reminding Hezekiah that he has no chances of winning against him, that no one can save him, not even the Lord his God. In a nutshell, Sennacherib continued to arrogantly defy the Lord. In the sayings of Sennacherib, I recognized the devils tactics which are: 1) to fill you with fear; 2) to ensure you look only at your circumstances from a human perspective (the flesh) and 3) to lie about the word of God or the character of God. Again, when Hezekiah read the letter, he went up to the temple of the Lord (Isaiah 37:14). As the verse of the day from the YouVersion bible reminds us “when I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (Psalm56:3). Hezekiah, went in to the temple to bring his fears under the care of the Lord his God.
There are three elements I would like to note about Hezekiah’s prayer: first, he honours the Lord and addresses Him with the name that is specific to what he wants the Lord to do. For example he says “O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim…”. The selection of the words used to describe the Lord is not random. He appeals to the Lord of hosts, not Jehovah Jireh, or Jehovah Rapha, etc. If you are familiar with your bible, whenever God uses that name, you know He means business. He is coming for judgement and salvation when that name is used. So that is what Hezekiah is appealing to. The second thing that Hezekiah does is that he turns his problem into a God problem. When you read Hezekiah’s prayer, you do not get the sense that he was the one affected by what Sennacherib said but we know that he was first affected by it, the people of Judah were affected as well because they feared for their lives but when Hezekiah came before the Lord, he acknowledged that the gravest thing done was against the Lord only, because it is His Name that was slandered and ridiculed. God was equated to gods made by human hands and this was the worst thing that could be said of the living God. Hezekiah recognized that and so he brought it before the Lord so that the Lord would bring glory to His Name by avenging Himself. The third thing that Hezekiah did is that he made his request which was that God would deliver the people of Judah from the hands of the Assyrians in order that His Glory be revealed throughout the earth. Eventually, God responded to Hezekiah and brought him a huge deliverance in the manner only the Lord of hosts can do (a hundred and eighty-five thousand men were slaughtered at night by the angel of the Lord!). In chapter 38 of Isaiah, we learn of another incidence where Hezekiah prayed to God and this time it was because he heard a message from God through the mouth of Isaiah who told him that he was going to die in his sickness. As he had done in the past, as soon as he heard the message he turned to the Lord in prayer in a humble manner. In his prayer, he addressed the character of God he was pleading to. In this case it was God, the rewarder. He asks God to do only one thing and that is to remember his faithfulness and how he has walked with him (Isaiah 38:3). Immediately, Hezekiah received an answer from the Lord who told him that he would not die from that sickness but that fifteen more years would be added to his life and not only that, he would be delivered from the king of Assyria. This is huge! Bringing your requests to the Lord means letting him deal with it, it means putting him at the centre of the situation, relinquishing control and letting God work in it. Like Hezekiah, we must get to the point where we are quick to think about how God can be glorified in the situation we are facing.
In all humility, Hezekiah’s prayers are teaching me that there is a right way to come before the Lord and there is a way to appeal to the Father to get answered. If you are able to point to God how His glory is tainted in your situation, then rest assured the Lord will come through for you for His Name sake. Also, if you are able to appeal to the character of God that speaks to your situation, He will come through for you. It might not be as immediate as it was with Hezekiah but it will be a salvation that you will marvel at. I pray the Lord helps us to learn to approach his courtroom with our petitions. May he also help us see that petitioning is not the same thing as begging. Amen.
A Word Aptly Spoken 