In Prayer, Begin With God, Not Yourself (2 Kings 20.2–3, 11)

Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD: “Remember now, O LORD, I implore you, how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.”

“The prophet Isaiah cried to the LORD…”

When you pray, where do you begin? What is the subject, and what is the object? This prayer by Hezekiah has some important lessons to teach about the focus and flow of prayer.

Background

It is unclear when this episode took place, but it seems to be around the time that God delivered Judah and King Hezekiah from Sennacherib and his Assyrian army.

King Hezekiah is quite sick. The prophet Isaiah comes to him and tells him that he will not get better. He should get his affairs in order and prepare to die. Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and prays that God will not let him die. He reminds God that he has been faithful and performed well. He should be saved. Commentators are hard on Hezekiah, writing that his prayer is pouty and self-serving. I wonder how they would react in the same situation. Hezekiah was only 39 years old.

Still, he is the leader of the people, and we expect more from a king. When we compare this to his reaction when Israel was in danger from Assyrian, we see a king who sulks and cries, not the king of strength we have read about before.

As Isaiah is on his way back home, God tells him to go back and tell Hezekiah he will grant his prayer. Isaiah returns to the king with the good news. In three days he will be completely healed, and he will live for fifteen years more. God also says that he will save Judah and defend the city—for God’s own sake and for David.

The words from God are key. Despite what Hezekiah prayed, God says he is not doing it because of Hezekiah’s faithfulness and goodness. He is doing it for his own sake and for David’s. Hezekiah’s prayer was focused on himself and his situation—God corrects him. The focus should be on God and his larger plans.

Still, Hezekiah is not satisfied. So He asks Isaiah for a sign that he really will be healed in three days. The sign of three days is not enough—he wants a sign to prove the sign! Isaiah prays, and God grants this prayer as well. Hezekiah receives his immediate sign.¹

Meaning

Our weak and limited humanity often makes us self-centered. In our prayers, we typically tend to begin with ourselves and our situation, and then move to the Bible and God to find our answers. Just as Hezekiah was focused on his sickness, he asked God to heal him, and reminded him of Hezekiah’s own good works.

This is backwards. Better to begin with God and his Word. Seek understanding and start with His character and His plan. Then apply it to our situation. This may seem like a subtle difference. Consider this example. I once knew a man who had just had his first child. It affected his life so positively that it affected his theology. He began teaching everyone who would understand that fatherhood was a perfect way to understand God as our heavenly father. “Look at how you love your kids,” he would say. “You would do anything for them—you would sacrifice for them.” This is true, of course, and I do not disagree. But what of someone who had a terrible father? A father who abandoned them, or beat them? They might understand fatherhood as a concept, but it will be difficult for them to use their father as a way to understand God.

Instead, begin with God. He is the model for the perfect earthly father. Those of us who are fathers should say, “How can I mimic God as a father?” In other words, I won’t use my fatherhood to understand God; rather, I use God to understand my fatherhood. This is better because not all fathers are proper fathers. But God is. So I start with God and then move to me and my situation.

Hezekiah’s attitude in prayer was wrong-headed. His attitude was selfish, focusing on himself rather than God and the bigger picture. Yet God answered his prayer anyway—though not without a correction. “It’s not about you, Hezekiah, it is about me and my good plans for humans.”

Application

There are three lessons in this prayer.

1. Begin with God—try to see the big picture. Use that perspective to address your situation with Him.
2. God often answers our prayers, even when we may not deserve it because of a selfish or pouty attitude. He loves us regardless.
3. God might use the answer to prayer to teach or correct us. This is typically difficult to see. A prayer journal can help, for we review what we prayed for, what our attitude was, and the answer received. Is there something in that answer that is a corrective to our attitude? Or something in the answer that teaches us?

Just as God is the creator and center of all that exists, He should be the starting point for our own prayers.

1. There are other places in scripture where people doubt the words coming from God, and ask for mores signs. See Gideon’s multiple request for a sign “Testing God (Judg 6.22, 36–37, 39–40, 7.15)“; see also Jesus’ healing of the paralytic in Mark 2.1-12. ↩