Thursday, June 28, 2018

"Spread It Out Before The Lord"

II Kings 19: 32-33

Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, "He shall not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; neither shall he come before it with a shield, nor throw up a mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come to this city," declares the Lord. 

Rabshakeh came from the king of Assyria with a letter to Hezekiah that equated the Lord God with all the idols the other Nations worshiped, that they had destroyed.

So Hezekiah spread the letter out before the Lord, admitting that this foreign king really had conquered all those peoples, and destroyed their temples and idols. And he thought he could do the same here; but the Lord God is not anything like any of these idols, He really is God.

So God told him He would take care if this guy. And He did. 

The Angel of the Lord struck 185,000 men in the camp (v. 35), so King Sennacherib went home to Nineveh. There he was murdered as he worshiped his god Nisroch (vs. 36-37). 

When we pray, and lay out before Him whatever it is we need help with, He will always answer. He loves to fight our battles for us. 

The better we get to know Him, the better we understand His ways, then the more we'll trust Him to do what He wants to do for us. 

We never need to be afraid of Him, but have the "fear of the Lord" that is a reverential awe for His greatness and power and ability to do everything. There is nothing He can't do, even if it's impossible for us. 

O my Father, thank You for Your greatness and Your gentleness, thank You for Your justice and Your mercy, thank You for Your lovingkindness and Your grace. 

Father, You are the Creator, and You made us in Your image, so we are creative, too. You are intelligent, and You gave us intelligence, too, to understand Your ways. We are Your imagination, and You have given us imagination also, so we can imagine You and what You have planned for us. 

Whatever we can imagine, though, what You are preparing for us, is beyond anything we can imagine. I find that fact so exciting! O Father, You love me so much more than I can imagine, my future with You will be beyond exquisite, beyond wonderous, beyond any words I have to use. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!