God Responds to Us - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in 2 Kings 20:1,

"This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover."

The Lord sent the prophet Isaiah to tell the good king Hezekiah that he was going to die. He had some kind of life-threatening boil on his body and the Lord told him he would not recover from it.

Fairly simple, right? God's prophet told the king what was going to happen.

But... it didn't happen! Was God mistaken? Not at all. We are told that when King Hezekiah received the word of the Lord that he was going to die, he prayed. When he prayed the Lord listened and sent Isaiah back in to see the king as he was on his way out of the court.

Following Hezekiah's prayer, the Lord told him, "This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life." Verses 5 and 6.

Clearly the Lord made a change in response to what Hezekiah had done (his prayer). This conflicts with the theology of many today. In many quarters it is thought that our sovereign and transcendent God determines all that will happen. It would be their understanding that the only reason Hezekiah had prayed was because the Lord determined he would, and that the Lord had always intended all along to heal him. However, that is not the intended thrust of the passage. We are clearly presented with a set of events where the Lord says one thing will happen, and then changed what was going to happen based on what a man did. We see this with Moses and others within the pages of Scripture.

The fact that God answers our prayers demonstrates the Lord will change things based on choices we make - like prayer. God has created us with a free will, and when we exercise that free will it can change what God may or may not do. In Hezekiah's case, it turned out to be an additional 15 years of life.

What we choose to do in this life can result in a response from God that we might consider as something good or not good for us. God didn't make us as robots. He created us in his own image, which includes the free exercise of our own volition.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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