Desperate king

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 2 Kings 18-19; Psalm 106

TO CHEW ON: "And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it, and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord." 2 Kings 19:14

Today's reading is only part of a larger story where Sennarcherib king of Assyria has threatened Hezekiah, king of Judah, numerous times.

• Hezekiah responded to the first threat by asking the Assyrian envoys to stop speaking the language the people could understand - 2 Kings 18:26.

• He responded to the second threat with silence and later called on Isaiah to pray - 2 Kings 18:16-37; 19:2-4.

• Today's reading is Assyria's third challenge. Walter Brueggemann says of this time:

"... it is important to understand the context of acute anxiety in which the king prays. Hezekiah utters his prayer because he is completely vulnerable and has exhausted all other resources" - Walter Brueggemann, Great Prayers of the Old Testament, p. 82 (emphasis added).

So Hezekiah goes to the temple in Jerusalem with the threatening Assyrian letter in hand, spreads it out before God and prays.

What a picture of "Help!" Perhaps this is what we should do more of when we get puzzling correspondence, bills that are bigger than the extra in our bank accounts, a bad report about our child from the teacher,  distressing news about our neighbourhood or country in the newspaper. We too could spread these things out before God and cry out for His help.

As the writer of my Bible's notes says, "Hezekiah is an excellent illustration of what a believer should do when threatened by an enemy. Hezekiah does not react to the threats of Sennarcherib, but cries out to the Lord for help" - Larry D. Powers, Notes on 2 Kings, New Spirit-Filled Life Bible, p. 507 (emphasis added).

PRAYER: Dear God, please bring to my mind this picture of Hezekiah the next time I feel threatened. May I make it a habit to call on You in trouble before I do anything else. Amen.  

PSALM TO PRAY: Psalm 106

MORE: A great OT prayer

Hezekiah's prayer here is considered another of the great prayers of the Old Testament. Our commenter on these prayers takes this lesson for us from Hezekiah's actions and words:

"In the midst of a frightened people and in the face of overwhelming imperial power, Hezekiah nevertheless acts and speaks as a person of faith who appeals to a will and an agency that refuses conventional worldly characterizations of power .... The most important promise of this text is that prayer cannot be confined to safe familial or domestic spheres of life. The most important seduction of this text is the temptation to harness 'the power of prayer' to the cause of state in uncritical ways" - Walter Brueggemann, Op. Cit. , pp. 86,87 (emphasis added).

Intercessor

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Genesis 18:16-33

TO CHEW ON: "Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord." Genesis 18:22

Here we see Abraham, in effect begging for the life of one of his family members and the inhabitants of the whole city. He knew his nephew Lot had settled in Sodom. Now the Lord had said He intended to destroy the city for its wickedness and Abraham was probably thinking,  Surely Lot isn't one of those wicked.

Abraham was such an effective intercessor he got the number of righteous for which God would spare the city from fifty down to ten.

Abraham, in his role, reminds me of another intercessor: Jesus.

His intercession is prophesied in Isaiah - Isaiah 53:12; 59:16.

During His earthly ministry He interceded

• for weak believers - Luke 22:32
• for His enemies - Luke 23:34
• that the Father would send the Holy Spirit - Luke 11:13
• and for the church - John 17:9.

As our risen Saviour, He continues to intercede before God

• for our acceptance - Romans 8:34
• and for our salvation - Hebrews 7:25

As those who have put our faith in Christ, we too have the noble task of interceding for others. Dick Eastman in his book The Hour that Changes the World defines intercession and gives us insights into it. Here are a few of them:

"What is intercession? It is God's method for involving His followers more completely in the totality of His plan .... Basically, intercession is prayer offered in behalf of another .... To intercede is to mediate. It is to stand between a lost being and an almighty God, praying that this person will come to know about God and His salvation .... Intercession is the broadest scope of prayer. There is no other mode of prayer that reaches out to all the world as does intercessory prayer .... Fill your intercession with the four key scriptural claims: Ask God to give more labourers to the harvest, to open doors for these workers, to bless them with fruit as the result of their efforts, and with finances to expand their work" - Dick Eastman, The Hour that Changes the World, pp. 75-85.

Abraham's prayer here is one of the Twelve Great Prayers of the Old Testament. In his book Great Prayers of the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann says of Abraham and his venture into prayer:

"The exchange exhibits Abraham as a daring man of faith. More importantly, it presents YHWH as a ready and available partner in the free play of prayer in which the destiny of the world hangs in the balance and is under intense negotiation" - Walter Brueggemann, Great Prayers of the Old Testament, p. 8 (Kindle Edition). 

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for the example of Abraham's intercession. Help me to be a more effective intercessor for my loved ones as well as for people around the world. Please teach me to intercede. Amen. 

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 

A this-makes-no-sense prayer

"Jeremiah" - Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel fresco)

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Jeremiah 32:16-35

TO CHEW ON: "And You have said to me, O Lord God, 'Buy the field for money and take witnesses'!—yet the city has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans." Jeremiah 32:25


Has God ever asked you to do something that made no sense? That was Jeremiah's situation on this day.

If we look at the context of our reading, we see the incident that sparked his this-makes-no-sense prayer. God had asked him to buy back the family farm in the village of Anathoth (Jeremiah 32:7) though he was a prisoner in a city surrounded by the Babylonians (Jeremiah 32:2). It was a symbolic gesture—a sort of down payment on the future. It was his act of obedience and faith in God's words, "Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in the land" - Jeremiah 32:15.

Jeremiah did what God told him to do, but he didn't understand. In his prayer, he unburdened himself to God.

• He starts out with praise - Jeremiah 32:17-19.

• He recounts how God has been faithful in keeping His promises to Israel - Jeremiah 32:20-22.

...but...

• Israel has been unfaithful at every turn and, to Jeremiah's mind, deserves the fate that seems imminent - Jeremiah 32:23-24.

• He ends - 'And you're asking me to buy land in this place, when the city is on the brink of falling to a foreign power?!' - my paraphrase of verse 25.

Perhaps God has asked us to do something similar—to step out in action, by faith, even though the surrounding events don't support the outcome we hope for.  Jeremiah's obedience in buying that field is a great example to us. His prayer is an encouragement, at least to me. It shows that even Old Testament spiritual giants had questions and the nerve to query God on what He was up to. Here Jeremiah was frank in his feelings. His faith needed stretching, just as ours does.

God's answer was no doubt a shot-in-the-arm to Jeremiah, and continues to bolster our faith these many generations later:

"Behold I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?" - Jeremiah 23:27.

PRAYER: Dear God, help me to be as quick to obey You as Jeremiah was, even when what You ask doesn't make sense to me. Thank You for the humanity of Jeremiah that comes through in this prayer. Help me to be just as transparent with You when I pray. Amen.

MORE: A Great Prayer of the Old Testament

Jeremiah's prayer here is considered one of the Great Prayers of the Old Testament. Walter Brueggemann, in his comments on these prayers draws a couple of lessons from this one for our prayer lives:

"First, we are permitted to pray all the dimensions of an unresolved life and an unsettled faith .... the God to whom we pray is hidden, mysterious, grand, and majestic, beyond all our patterns and systems of understanding. We celebrate a God of generous fidelity but this is a God who will not be mocked. We know about a God who calls to account, but beyond accounting there is the God of immense forbearance; therefore we must voice all those traces of God's holiness without managing them too closely" - Walter Brueggemann, Great Prayers of the Old Testament, pp. 73, 74 Kindle edition (emphasis added). 

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 Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Fish-belly prayer

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Jonah 2:1-10

TO CHEW ON: "'But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay what I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord.'" Jonah 2:9

Our reading today is Jonah's desperate prayer for help from the belly of the fish. Interesting, isn't it, how he plotted to "flee...from the presence of the Lord" but now he begs for God's intervention, talking to Him as if He were very much present!

This is another of the great prayers of the Old Testament. Walter Brueggemann in his chapter on Jonah's prayer (Great Prayers of the Old Testament), points out several interesting things about it:

1. Jonah recognizes that even before his actual return to dry land the fish belly is part of his rescue and he thanks God for that - Jonah 2:2: "...the fish functions in the narrative as a liminal 'middle zone' between the great threat of the sea and the equally great safety of the dry land" - Walter Brueggemann, Great Prayers of the Old Testament, Kindle edition p. 60.

2. Despite his grim situation, Jonah seems unwilling to completely acknowledge his own responsibility for being there. He says, "'For You cast me into the deep..." (Jonah 2:3). Ahem, Jonah, wasn't it you who ran away from God, got on the ship and suggested the sailors throw you overboard? "To credit YHWH with the distress serves to exempt Jonah himself from responsibility..." Brueggemann, p. 62.

3. Jonah's poetic description of his plight (Jonah 2:4-6a) is an example of exaggeration—hyperbole: "The language of prayer is free to employ such hyperbole; it is the sort of regressive speech that we may use in contexts of acute danger and pain" - Brueggemann, 62.

4. Jonah acknowledges his "fox-hole religion": "When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord" (Jonah 2:7).

5. He promises to do what God has asked and with a good attitude: "I will sacrifice to You / With the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed" - Jonah 2:9

6. Despite his little side trips into self-justification (Jonah 2:3) and preachiness (Jonah 2:8), his main focus is God (Jonah 2:2-4, 6-7,9) and his prayer ends in thankfulness for his rescue before it is ever accomplished.

Let's gather a few principles for our own praying from Jonah's example:

• Our present setting—a hospital bed, a time of unemployment, a difficult season with a family member or whatever—may be a 'middle zone' for us too, i.e. part of God's rescue plan.

• We do well to ask ourselves, is there any self-deception in our attitudes or prayers?

• It's okay to tell God exactly how we feel.

• If we make promises in our fox-hole, let's keep them!

• Above all, let's focus on God who is greater than any pickle in which we'll ever find ourselves. As we do this our prayers will shift from reciting trouble to praise and thanksgiving for His rescue even before we actually reach "...dry land" - Jonah 2:10.

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for very human Jonah and his prayer. Help me to be honest with You and myself, and to call out to You when I'm in trouble with the faith and God-focus Jonah showed. Amen.

MORE: Questions we can ask ourselves

I really like the three questions with which Walter Brueggemann ends this chapter—questions which warrant honest consideration within the privacy of our own hearts.

1. How can we pray in the midst of our disobedience?
2. From what will God deliver and rescue us?
3. How can we pray past our own self-deception?
- Brueggemann, p. 67.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

"O Lord … for Your own sake"

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Daniel 9:1-19

TO CHEW ON: "O Lord hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord listen and act! Do not delay for Your own sake, my God, for Your city and Your people are called by Your name."  Daniel 9:19

Apologies that start out, "I'm sorry," then turn at "but…" into self-justification ring hollow. There is not a whisper of such an attitude in Daniel's prayer.

Though he was devout in his own life, in this prayer he includes himself with his countrymen: "We have sinned and committed iniquity, … done wickedly … rebelled …. Neither have we heeded the prophets …. We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God" (emphasis added).

He recognizes that their current state of exile is a consequence of the nation's rebellion and begs for God's mercy: "To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against Him …. we do not present our supplication before You because of our righteous deeds but because of Your great mercies" (Daniel 9:9,18 - emphasis added).

His main concern is God's glory and not his or his people's restoration. It's important, Daniel reasons, that the people return to their land and the city ("Jerusalem" - vs. 16) and its temple ("sanctuary" - vs 17) be rebuilt because they are attached to God's name and reputation.

There is much we can apply to our own prayers from Daniel's example.

1. We can come to God without excuses, owning our sins and the sins of our families, churches, and nation.

2.We can accept the fact that the law of consequences, of "sowing and reaping," is still in effect for us. The sins we have turned a blind eye to in society are entering the church and she will suffer the consequences unless she repents. Now, like Daniel, we depend on God's mercy and not what we do.

3. We can raise the goal of our prayers to go from praying for our successes   to the enhancement of God's reputation and glory: "… Do not delay for your own sake, my God, for your city (the church?) and Your people are called by Your name" Daniel 9:19.

PRAYER: Dear God, may I catch the spirit of Daniel in my prayer—that of owning and admitting my sins, repenting, and relying on Your mercy. I want Your good reputation and glory to be enhanced, not hindered, by my life. Amen.
 
MORE: A great OT prayer
Daniel's prayer here is counted with the great prayers of the Old Testament. Walter Brueggemann ends his chapter on Daniel's prayer with three great questions we might want to ask ourselves:

1. How can we pray when we feel lost or dislocated?
2. What are the worldly and imperial powers about which we need to pray?
3. How can we call God to faithfulness? - Walter Brueggemann, Great Prayers of the Old Testament, p. 121.

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The Holy Bible, New King James Version Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. - Used with permission.

Our actions seen and weighed

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 Samuel 2:1-11

TO CHEW ON: “Talk no more so very proudly;
Let no arrogance come from your mouth,
For the Lord is the God of knowledge;
And by Him actions are weighed." - 1 Samuel 2:3

Tim Challies in his book The Next Story reminds us of how the internet and wireless technology has made much of our lives traceable. Search engine data, email, telephone and text message records, our twitter stream, not to speak of what we write on blogs and comment on web pages can all be cobbled together to form a picture of who we are. Of course, if we have nothing to hide, we don't worry a lot about this, relying on the improbability that anyone will actually take the time and effort to sleuth it all out and join the dots.

However, there is One who doesn't need Google's search engine records to know what kind of person we are: "The Lord, the God of knowledge." He is the One who knows us in an all-inclusive Psalm 139 way and will eventually weigh our actions.

Our focus verse today is part of a prayer, offered by Hannah after keeping her promise that if she would have a son, she would give him back to the Lord.  It's interesting that later in the chapter of today's reading, after Hannah has finished praying and gone home, probably in blissful ignorance of the tainted environment in which she's left Samuel (barely out of toddlerhood) the writer begins  the story of Eli's sons. They turn out to be a living illustration of what she has just prayed.

He begins the story about them: "Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord" - 1 Samuel 2:12. Then he describes how they were flaunting the rules of handling the sacrifices, and ends: "Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord" - 1 Samuel 2:17.

Whether the people knew Eli's sons were sinning or not isn't clear, and isn't the issue. What mattered was that God saw and His evaluation counted.

I take two challenges from today's passage.

1. I need to realize that God knows even my most private moments. Despite the digital trail I leave with my daily actions, I may be able to maintain a comfortable degree of privacy from others. But I can't hide anything from Him. He not only sees my actions, but knows how to weigh them — interpret the motivations from which they come.

2. I want to live in such a way that if someone actually took the time to piece together the digital bits I leave behind, that trail would glorify Jesus.

PRAYER: Dear God, help me to live each moment with the consciousness that You see. And help me to gain the wisdom to weigh my actions with the scales that You use. Amen.

MORE: Hannah's prayer
You would imagine that at such a wrenching time for a mother,  Hannah's thoughts could have been of self-pity or wishing she could go back on her promise. But no. Her prayer is anything but selfish. It is a grand peon of praise to God and considered one of the twelve great prayers of the Old Testament. Walter Brueggemann says of her prayer:

"She sings of a surprise in gratitude. She sings that her family will continue. She sings that her people will have a future. She sings that through this little boy named 'asked' there will soon be newness for the poor and needy and hungry and feeble. She sings in the way singing is possible only among those who have felt the powerful invasiveness of YHWH's newness where no newness was possible. She sings of the God who 'brings life' She sings to the God who raises up. This is the God who lifts the needy. Hannah is the voice of all those who still have ashes in their hair and in their throats, who find themselves on the way to royal banquets and safe places" - Walter Brueggemann, Great Prayers of the Old Testament,  p. 32.