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Saturday... A prayer by someone in deep trouble...


Saturday... It is so good to see how others have handled difficult times in their lives. And here is a prayer  by someone who was in deep trouble.

King Hezekiah in Isaiah 37:17 (NLT) prayed, "Bend down, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Listen to Sennacherib's words of defiance against the living God." 

Sennacherib was the King of Assyria and he was coming to destroy Judah and he sent a letter to Hezekiah who was the king of Judah and in verse 10 he said, "Do not let the god you depend on deceive you."

Do you have people when you are going through difficult times put you down and ridicule you and they tell you, you're waisting your time believing in God? They not only put you down but also God. They say you are being deceived. And maybe it starts to get to you and it damages your faith. The evil one is great at put downs especially at your faith in God. He knows how effective it can be, especially during difficult times.

But Hezekiah went to the temple and prayed. He goes on in verses 18-19, "It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations. And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned then. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all-only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands." 

Now in verse 20, Hezekiah gets down to business. He said, "Now, O Lord, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O Lord, are God." Then the the earth will know that you alone are God.

Could it be that the trouble we are in is there to show who is God? Could it be that the difficulty you are going through is there to show that the God you serve is the real God? That serving Him does really make a difference? That He wants those are are putting you down for your faith to see that they are deadly wrong, that your God is the only God? Could it be that you are an instrument to show that to be true?

In verse 36 it says, "That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere. Then King Sennacherib of Assyrian broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Ninevah and stayed there."

So who is the god you serve? Could this be a time for all the kingdoms of the earth to know that you alone, O Lord, are God? Could it be? Yes, yes! #todaysbeginning

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