Spread it Out Before the Lord!

Twice this week (and it isn’t even half over) I have heard the reference made to Hezekiah and how he “spread it out before the Lord”. Talk about a word of wisdom from the Lord… it is a sign!

So here goes…

2 Kings 19:14 Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord.

The letter was from the enemy telling the king it was all over, he might as well give it up because we know your God can not and will not save you. You’ve seen the destruction of those who thought they could beat us with their gods… but if you surrender… (my paraphrase)  2 Kings 18:31 “Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat each of his vine and each of his fig tree and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die.”

Let me ask every encourager and every person who needs encouragement, have we not received the very same message (over and over again) from our enemy? Has he not shown us our lives and told us God does not take care of us? Has he not lied to us everyday in every way, telling us that we can be happy, healthy and wise if we stop listening to God and start living by our enemy’s dictates.

Has our enemy not deceived us with the evidence in our own lives, that God is the cause of our troubles when in truth we, with our enemy’s whispered advice have fallen for the deception and laid down the only true weapons that will destroy the enemy and his evil plans for us.

2 Kings 19:14-19 Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, “O Lord, the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. Now, O Lord our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Lord, are God.”

What if… encourager… what if, you who needs encouragement… were to write out the message the enemy is sending you and then SPREAD IT OUT BEFORE THE LORD!

What if? A written message taken before the Lord…

2 Kings 19:20 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard you.’

I truly truly, believe in prayer! It is “the number one fixer of all that is causing distress and chaos in the life of an encourager and the life of the encouraged!” But… what Hezekiah did by taking the letter from his enemy with him in prayer, becomes a powerful use of “making your requests known”… Philippians 4:6 Be anxious of nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Take the messages you are receiving, write them into words you can “see” and “tell” of the effects they have on you. Write them as the enemy would write them – as the threat they are to destroy you. Witness for yourself the weapons that have been formed against you. Witness for your self the enemy’s plans as Hezekiah did. 1 Peter 5:8 Be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Then… SPREAD IT OUT BEFORE THE LORD!

I don’t think the written message is for God… I think it is for us! I think seeing the gory details of the warfare against us in black (or blue, or red) and white will begin to convince us this is serious business! John 8:32 “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Hezekiah needed to know his enemy and we do to. Just like Hezekiah’s enemy, our’s comes as an angel of light who is “just concerned we will suffer needlessly, without a protector who cares for us or can save us”.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for me with all your heart”

Write it out… what is the current army coming against you? What battle are you wounded and bloody from? Take up God’s armor and His weapons by which you will be able to stand firm. Then…  SPREAD IT OUT BEFORE THE LORD!

And listen… Be still and know He is God! His instructions for defeating our enemy will come.

But remember… in this life… the battle always rages!

Just know… you encourager… just know, you who needs encouragement… You are being trained to be a warrior. To serve in the army of the Lord! Not to go before Him but to follow. Not to stand alone but to be covered by His pinions of salvation and redemption. Not to be defeated but to share in His victory.

For us to imagine that God is going to take away our responsibility to participate in His plan, or clean up all the messes we have allowed and continue to allow in our lives would be to imagine that God is not God at all but our personal genie, to do our bidding under our threat of a tantrum of unbelief.

Don’t give in to the temptation of battle fatigue, or a false battle plan or a sense of entitlement to take the easy way out… SPREAD IT OUT BEFORE THE LORD!

 

**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB  version of the Bible