Isaiah 37:21-22 (NIV) Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word the Lord has spoken against him: “Virgin Daughter Zion despises and mocks you. Daughter Jerusalem tosses her head as you flee.”

King Sennacherib of Assyria was used to winning every battle that he fought and had become very powerful. Next on his list of conquests was the land of Judah, which included Jerusalem. After sending his emissaries to the main gate at the wall around Jerusalem to try to scare the people into surrendering, he sent a letter to King Hezekiah mocking God and threatening and intimidating him. King Hezekiah took the letter to the temple and spread it out before the Lord and prayed. He prayed asking God to intervene, and he humbled himself telling the Lord that these enemies were too strong for him and for Judah. He asked the Lord to deliver them so that all the kingdoms of the earth would know that He is the one and only God. The Lord then spoke through the Prophet Isaiah letting King Hezekiah know that because he prayed, He would deliver Judah from Sennacherib and the Assyrian army.

Think about that for a moment. God was going to deliver His people because King Hezekiah prayed. What if he hadn’t prayed? What if he had tried to take matters into his own hands? There would have been one of two results, because King Hezekiah had only two choices to make. He could surrender to Sennacherib and the Assyrians and lose the land and his kingship with the people being made subject to foreigners. Another choice he could have made was to try to fight the Assyrians with his army, although the odds were great against him. That would have resulted in death and destruction for him and for a lot of the people of Judah. Thankfully there was a third choice, which was the one that he made, which was to pray and ask the Lord to rescue them. Because King Hezekiah chose to pray, he and the people were delivered miraculously by God.

Have you ever thought about your choices in different situations? Have you thought of some things that you did to try to figure out on your own things that had come up in your life? I’m sure that the results weren’t good. Think of the many situations in your past that could have turned out differently if only you had prayed. Thinking back on my own life, I’ve had a lot of times when I thought about some of the bad outcomes based on decisions that I made about things that had come up in my life. Because I was in the driver’s seat making my own decisions, I crashed and burned many times. If only I had prayed. But thank God that He is merciful and that I finally learned to go to the Lord about everything. I don’t ever want to face unnecessary consequences again because I failed to pray about some situation or circumstance. Let’s stay safe and take everything to God in prayer because when we pray, He hears and He answers. Be blessed and delivered because you prayed.

Pastor Joey Vazquez