Trust in God is a powerful thing

Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:

What did I like about today’s passage?

I love Hezekiah’s trust in God and Isaiah’s prophetic role in encouraging this. I love how Hezekiah expresses that trust in prayer, acknowledging God’s creation and ownership of everything, a far bigger power even than the mighty army which threatened Judah.

This combination of prophets, priests and kings can work pretty well together, can’t it? God knows we need to hear and approach him before we can be led by him. Otherwise we can mislead ourselves into thinking that, just because we believe in God, we are led by him, while we might actually be lost in our own ideas instead.

Can anything get in the way of a leader who is committed to learning and following God? The Assyrians’ defeat suggests not. But sadly there’s always room for pride. Hezekiah’s illness unfortunately seemed to shift his focus towards himself in a story repeated in Isaiah chapters 35 to 40. Despite the blessing of an extension to his life, his dealings with envoys from Babylon and his reaction Isaiah’s news that his descendants and Israel would be ruined, his main takeaway seemed to be relief that he would be fine.

I found it painful to read about Manasseh and Amon seeming to set Judah on course for this destruction. But I love how the prophet and priest helped king Josiah find clarity about God’s will, trust in God’s voice and peace thanks to God’s intervention in his time.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God provides ways for people to know, trust and get close to him. When faithful leaders are guided by this, they can guide nations to peace in relationship with God.

Jesus provides a unique combination of prophet, priest and king in one person, so we can know God and the goodness he wants for us by following him. Our leaders can benefit from doing this too. But they need to be like Hezekiah in his best years, trusting God more than self and learning from experience following God rather than proudly claiming to have it all.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

I need to get better at trusting God and measuring my success in that by closeness to him rather than amount of “blessing” or stuff acquired. There may be things God needs to show me or, like Josiah, remind me about to follow him faithfully. I want a heart like his: “responsive… humbled…”, especially when God’s teaching might clash with my own ideas.

Who am I going to share this with?

Again, I don’t know yet. I have various discussions in progress with people as we try to discern what God is saying and where he might be leading us. I’m conscious that sometimes I might confuse my own leaps of insight with revelation from God, and it would be rubbish to be misled like that. But I also trust that God can show us things which surprise us, especially as I expect following Jesus to result in changes of mind (Mark 1, Romans 12…)