April 13, 2010 - Hezekiah, A Man Of Prayer

Meditation on 2 Kings 19

The success of Hezekiah to bring his country, the Southern kingdom of Judah back to God was due to his prayers and diligent action for God. God had answered his prayers time and again. For example, let us examine his manner and content of prayer when his city was under siege by a powerful and arrogant enemy, Sennacherib king of Assyria so we can learn how to pray.

First, we see how he had humbled himself before God with sackcloth and torn clothes in the temple with his officials doing the same. Then he asked Isaiah, the prophet to pray for his people and his country. He also spread out Sennacherib's threatening and blasphemy letter before God in the temple knowing God would see it.

When Hezekiah prayed, he addressed God as the creator and the sole ruler of all nations. He acknowledge that all other gods were man made and therefore could not protect the gentile nations. He asked God to deliver his nation in order to demonstrate that only the LORD was the true God in all the earth. That was truly a God centered prayer.

After his prayer, God immediately told Isaiah to give him a long reply. He was assured of God's deliverance and that God would destroy the blasphemous king who boasted that the LORD could not deliver Judah. God wanted his people to understand that yes, God did use Sennacherib to punish the gentiles. But the Assyrians themselves will be slaughtered by God soon. Indeed 185,000 of them were dead the next morning.

May our prayer attitude and focus imitate Hezekiah's.