“Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.”
Isaiah 38:3
Hezekiah’s first response to the crisis was to seek the face of God in prayer. His second response was to seek to live with a clear conscience.
Look again at Hezekiah’s prayer. Is he holding up his faithfulness as leverage in his prayer? Some commentators suggest that, but Hezekiah was a godly man, and godly people know that they are sinners.
Hezekiah seems to be saying, “Well, if I am going to die, I am at peace with God.” He had a clear conscience, and in this unexpected crisis, a clear conscience brought him great comfort.
What Hezekiah says is like what Paul said at the end of his life: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7).
Notice why Hezekiah had a clear conscience. It wasn’t because he had never sinned. He says to God, “You have cast all my sins behind your back” (Isa. 38:17). “So, if it is time for me to go, I am ready.”
Sooner or later all of us will leave this world and enter, fully conscious, into the presence of the Lord. Live in such a way that you are always ready for that day!
Paul says, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man” (Acts 24:16). In other words, “I always strive to live in such a way that if God calls me home I am ready to go.”
That’s what Hezekiah did. He had a clear conscience, and when the crisis came it brought him great comfort.
A prayer: “Lord, help me to live through crisis in such a way that I am always ready for the day you call me home. Help me to walk before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and to do what is good in Your sight.”
