Hezekiah responds to the promise of verse 5 with the prayer of verse 16. God said, “I will add fifteen years to your life” (38:5). Hezekiah prays, “Oh restore me to health and make me live!” (38:16).

Faith prays for what God has promised. ...

It’s hard to be sure of the precise order of events in Hezekiah’s life, but here’s the most likely reconstruction:

• Hezekiah became sick to the point of death (38:1)
• Despite being a godly man, he struggled with bitterness (38:...

Notice what Hezekiah says here: “It was for my welfare that I had great bitterness.” How could God use this man’s bitterness for his good?

The answer is in verse 15: “I walk slowly all my years.” “Walk slowly” means “walk humbly.” Hezekiah...

When you go through an unexpected crisis, your faith will be tested. Hezekiah is writing after he recovered from his illness (38:9). Looking back, he is full of thanksgiving: “He has spoken to me, and he himself has done it” (38:15).

The w...

All Christians will experience anguish. But when you experience anguish, what are you to do? Here are two situations that can lead you to Jesus:

1. When you fear being cut off, let your anguish lead you to Jesus<b...

Jesus knows what it is to be separated from loved ones. At the Last Supper, He said to His disciples, “I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Mat. 26:29).

No on...

Hezekiah feels as if he is being mauled by a lion, and he fears that the lion may be God Himself! And if God is against him, what hope does he have?

Why would this godly king fear that God might be against him? A godly man knows that even a...

Your life is like a piece of fabric being formed on a weaver’s loom. The threads are woven together, some of them bright, and some dark. But all of them are woven by God.

One day the weaver cuts the fabric from the loom. That’s it! It’s don...

Hezekiah knows that he will see the Lord in the world to come. His point is that that he will no longer see the Lord as he has in the past when he has worshipped with God’s people in the temple.

When we worship, we behold the beauty of the...

The beginning of Hezekiah’s crisis was shock, the end was hope, but the middle was anguish.

Perhaps this is where you are today. You have moved through the shock of being disrupted by a crisis. You have affirmed your hope in God. ...

Here in 2 Kings, we get a fuller picture of what happened. Hezekiah is at the point of death, and Isaiah says, “Set your house in order, for you shall die.” Hezekiah turns to the wall and prays (20:1-2).

Isaiah leaves, but God says, “Turn b...

Hezekiah was sick and “at the point of death” (38:1). It must have been hard to believe that God would heal him. So, God gave him a sign.

“Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.”...

There are two ways to lose the path of wisdom. One is to forget the means that God uses. The other is to forget that it is God who uses the means.

Isaiah said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil” (Isa. 38:21). But God s...

What would you think of a person who said, “God will give strength to my body, so there is no need for me to eat”? Or, “God will keep me warm, so there is no need for me to wear clothing”?

God gives strength to your body by means of the fo...

This gives us a clue about Hezekiah’s illness. There was a boil, evidence of an infection raging in his body. And Isaiah told the king to apply a dressing on the infected area, using a cake of figs.

Hezekiah did not have the blessing of mo...

Let’s look at the happy ending of Hezekiah’s story. We will see what God did and how He did it. What we find in these verses speaks clearly to any crisis we may face today.

Hezekiah is at the point of death. So, he prays to the Lord, and G...

Maybe you will say today, “I have not sought God in prayer, and I don’t have a clear conscience. I can’t say that I have walked before God in faithfulness. I have not served Him with my whole heart. I have not done what is good in His sight. So ho...

When Hezekiah faced this unexpected crisis, the first thing he did was to pray, and the second thing he did was seek to live with a clear conscience. Notice what happened next: “Hezekiah wept bitterly” (38:3).

Why did he weep bitterly? Why...

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? So...

How did Hezekiah respond to this unexpected crisis? How will you respond in a crisis?

The first thing Hezekiah did was to seek the face of God in prayer. When Isaiah comes with grim news, Hezekiah turns to the wall and prays. There were any...

We are looking at the story of a godly king. And yet of this man we read that he became sick and was near death.

This was a painful affliction. And it happened at the worst possible time. The king and all of God’s people were suddenly plun...

Hezekiah was one of the best kings God’s people ever had. He was the son of Ahaz, who was one of the worst (16:1–4; 18:1). This reminds us that God can redeem people from the worst background and move their lives in a totally different direction.<...

“Those days” is a reference to a time when God’s people were under attack. The king of Assyria had invaded the Promised Land. He began in the north, where 10 tribes had broken away from the line of David. The northern kingdom was overwhelmed, and ...

This seems counterintuitive. Surely if I give freely, I will have less. How does this principle work out in practice?

Think about farming. The farmer has a sack of seed. What does he do? He scatters it freely. Then, when harvest com...

“Honour” means “give weight to.” Give weight to the Lord with your wealth. You do this by laying aside a portion of all that God has given you and giving it back to Him.

What should you put aside?
“The firstfruits of al...

Proverbs warns us about four temptations that will come with money.

1. The temptation to control
The people curse him who holds back grain, but a blessing is on the head of him who sells it (11:26). God has bl...

If money is a blessing, how can it also be a danger? Because money is a power. It lures us as a rival god and then makes increasing demands. It will seek to take control of your life. Money is a great servant, but it is not a good master.

...

Solomon affirms the reward of hard work. But then he goes on to say that the blessing of the Lord makes one rich. So, which is it, Solomon? Does it depend on our hard work, or does it depend on the Lord?

If you put these two statements toge...

If we want to have the joy that Jesus had, we need to live like Jesus lived. This was His approach to the work the Father gave Him to do:

Jesus began early
The sluggard was slow to start but at the age of twelve, Jesus...

Author and professor Rebecca DeYoung describes laziness or sloth as “resistance to the demands of love.” Then she talks about what can all too easily happen in a marriage—a husband and wife get into an argument, and they retreat to different parts...