HEZEKIAH’S PRAYER SECRETS (2 Kings 20:1-11)
Bob Marcaurelle
2003 Lynn Ave
Anderson, SC 29621
(Part of 852 Sermons on one full length CD
(Data- M Word for $30.00)
When life beats you to your knees, says Norman Vincent Peale, that is a good position from which to pray. Hezekiah’s Pastor Isaiah in a strange pastoral visit, said, “Set your house in order, you are going to die.” Given up by the doctors, the clergy and even God, he turned to prayer. The disease was cured. Death was chased away. The earth’ rotation was reversed. And Jerusalem was spared as 185,000 Assyrians died in one night. Hezekiah teaches us to:
A. PRAY BELIEVINGLY.
1. Belief in the Power of God. You say preacher, “Do you really believe God reversed the sun?” I surely do! I say with Dr. Talmadge, “The whole universe waits upon God, and sons and moons and stars are not very big things to Him, and he can with His little finger turn back an entire world as easily as you can set back the minute hand of your watch.”
2. Belief in the Personal Concern of God. Some of us doubt God is interested in our little problems. This miracle says that the untold millions of stars streaking through space are not as important or as precious in the sight of God as one child of God with a need. No star can say, “Our Father,” but I can and you can.
And that is the basis of prayer. The dark pages of life become the best pages because they drive us to our knees. Most of us do not really pray when all is well. We say words. We go through the motions. But in the grip of trouble we do little more than worry on our knees.
Our trouble is we pay only lip service to believing Bible stories like this. It reads, to us, like a fairy tale. Illustration: Reality, to us, is depicted in the cartoon where the little boy, kneeling by his bed, says, “Uncle Herman still doesn’t have a job. Aunt Sally still isn’t married and daddy’s hair keeps falling out. And I’m tired of saying prayers for this family that don’t do any good.”
The tragedy is, when we bump into a few “no” answers we lose our faith in prayer. Some give up prayer altogether. Some reserve their praying for emergency hours. And most of us do not take the time and effort to cultivate the difficult art of learning to pray. All three responses are tragic because they rob our lives of the peace and power and the purpose that can come from God through prayer.
B. PRAY SPECIFICALLY
He did not scatter pious cliches all over heaven. One reason we don’t have answers, is that we do not ask. The Bible says “You do not have because you do not ask.” (Js. 4:2). He wanted one thing and cried out for one thing and that was to live. He asked God for it and he got it. Prayer is just that simple and that powerful. Without prayer he would have died and because of prayer he lived. God has many blessings He wants to give us but we do not get them because we do not ask for them.
One reason we don’t really ask is because we are too lazy. Specific praying takes a great deal of time and effort and that is why we do not do it. When people come for counseling because of messed up lives or homes, the first order of business is to get them to identify their root problem. They can tell you the symptoms easily...”My wife yells and screams...My husband doesn’t pay me any attention...,” but getting down to the why of these symptoms takes time and effort.
The same is true in the Christian life. We must spend time alone with God, listening and learning as He leads us into our own depths and shows us what we really need. It does not take long to say, “Deliver me from worry or overeating or tension or working too much.” But it will take time to get to the root of these problems; to find out why we worry or over-eat or over-work and seek the deliverance we really need.
We also fail to ask God for specific things because we are too proud. The Bible says, “Ask and it will be given you...Let your requests be made known unto God.” (Matt. 6; Phil.4) We give all kinds of reasons for not asking. In fact, many books on prayer actually condemn people like Hezekiah and criticize a prayer like his. We call asking “childish” and say we must use the abilities God has given us to solve our problems. We call asking “selfish” and we say we should fold our hands and accept the inevitable. We call asking “cowardly” and say we should take our medicine without whining. But the real reason we don’t ask is pride. We don’t want to be obliged to our Creator.
Illustration: There is a story about a man who died and went to heaven. One sight that intrigued him was a huge barn. It was by far the largest building in heaven. He asked the angel who was escorting him, “What is that building?” With a touch of sadness in his eyes, the angel answered, “That building is full of all the blessings God wanted to give to His people, but they failed to ask for them.” It has been well said that if regrets are allowed into heaven, our number one regret will be that we did not pray more. We have not because we ask not.
C. PRAY EARNESTLY
God said to Hezekiah, “I have seen thy tears.” One reason our prayer lives are impoverished is that God says, “I have not seen any tears.” There is no answer because there is no anguish. We peal off a few petitions before falling to sleep, forget we ever prayed them in a few days, and expect that kind of praying to touch God. The literal translation of Matthew 7:7 is, “Keep on asking and you will receive, keep on seeking and you will find, keep on knocking and the door will be opened.” This carries the idea of urgency and fervency and persistence. It is not that He wants us to care. He wants us to have the holy boldness and tenacity of Jacob. When he wrestled with the Angel of the Lord, he grabbed hold and said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” (Gen. 32:26
Dr. L.R. Scarborough used Hezekiah’s prayer as an example of the kind of praying that brings revival. We need, says Scarborough, a burdened heart. Our new hymnal contains the song our young people made popular, “Do You Really Care?” A more penetrating, pertinent question could not be asked of the church in this hour. Has our ease and luxury dulled our sense of caring? Do we care that thousands are heading straight to hell all around us? Do we care that sin is ruining the lives of more of our young people and young married people than we are willing to admit? Do we care that many in our church family are still bound by horrible sins and that make life a hell-on-earth for them and their loved ones? Do we care that most of our prayers never get off the ground because they are based on ignorance of the laws of prayer or backed up by inconsistent lives? Do we care? That is the crucial question facing us. Are you prepared to ask God for the gift of caring? Be sure you want it because the price of a burdened heart often runs high.
Illustration: A young singer, obviously proud of her preaching ability, asked a friend, “I know that I have a god-given talent, and people enjoy my singing, but I really don’t feel I bring them closer to God. What do I need to do”? Her honest friend replied, “You need your heart broken a couple of times so you will have a compassion for others.”
D. PRAY DANGEROUSLY
Hezekiah dared to ask God to halt what He Himself had decreed. He prayed against what had been interpreted to him by his pastor as the will of God. I do not believe it was ever God’s will for him to die. Reading between the lines I hear God saying, “Hezekiah, you are going to die. You are beyond all human, medical help.” And what God wanted was a deeper level of pleading, a more strenuous wringing out of his soul. I cannot give you neat and tidy little rules about prayer because each situation is different. But one of the great prayer principles in the Bible is that we are to pray boldly and even dangerously. Abraham argued with God over the destruction of Sodom. Moses argued with God over the destruction of the Israelites. Jacob wrestled with God. Jesus knew Calvary was the will of God for Him and yet He went to Gethsemane and sweat blood to see if there was some other way. We are always to yield to the will of God but we are also to “let our requests be made known to Him.”
E. PRAY HONESTLY
Hezekiah told God how good and faithful he had been. Some modern “self is dead” preachers throw fits over this kind of praying. They say all we can plead is our badness and the blood of Christ. It’s a good thing Hezekiah didn’t hear their sermons because if he had followed their advice, he would have died. Why, because he would have been lying to God in prayer. Sometimes, in prayer, we lift up our virtues and sometimes, like Daniel (Dan. 9), we lift up our faults, but at all times we are to be honest. People who say things because they are supposed to say them will not get through to God. Why? Illustration: “We might as well kneel down/Andworship gods of stone/As offer to the living God/A prayer of words alone.”
Pretense, even when it is pious pretense, has caused many a child of God to miss the blessings of God. For example, when a crisis comes, many of us fold our hands and piously say, “Whatever God wants I want.” Like Muslims we say, “Allah wills it! So be it!” We say it because we think we are supposed to say it, or we are trying to put something over on God. Hezekiah, following this example would have said, “So be it, Lord. Thou hast spoken and I will gladly die.” It would have been a dishonest prayer and he would have died. Instead, he prayed, “Oh, restore me to health and make me live!” (Is. 38:16) And he lived!
Illustration: When my little girl went to surgery I begged God to let her recover. That was what I wanted and what I prayed. I concluded the prayer with - “Nevertheless, not my will but Your will be done” - which is the number one condition of power in prayer. I was willing to accept the worst, believing that God knows best. But to say I wanted the worst, would have been a lie, even though it was a pious lie.
F. PRAY IMPERFECTLY
Hezekiah’s prayer had several things wrong with it. He should have included some confession of sin. He should have asked for healing and then said, “Nevertheless, not my will but Your will be done.” His reasons for avoiding death were defective theologically (Is 38:18). The Book of Second Chronicles says he was too proud after his recovery and caused the later fall of Jerusalem (32:25). The one great sin of his life, recorded in the Bible, came after his recovery (Is. 39). But God still answered his prayer.
Illustration: A local company has as its motto, “Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong.” In other words, even if you can’t arrive at perfection in a job, give that job your best shot.
This is true of prayer. We don’t have to dot every “i” and cross every “t” for the Lord to hear us and help us. If the Lord refused to answer all defective prayers we would never have a prayer answered, for they are all defective somewhere. But we are not praying to some heartless Computer Bank in the heavens, but to our heavenly Father who leads us down the road of prayer even when we stumble.
Illustration: My first few years as a Christian were agonizing when it came to prayer. Nothing has ever been harder for me to learn or to do. The more I read on prayer the more I found wrong with my own praying. I read of men like Wesley giving four hours a day to prayer and I couldn’t give fifteen minutes. I was ready to give up when a statement by Dr. Fosdick in his book The Meaning of Prayer turned my prayer life around. It is still a source of strength and encouragement. He talked about how difficult prayer was for some people and then he gave this advice. “If you can’t pray as you OUGHT, pray as you CAN.” Amen!
