Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a You Tube video of images from Gary Chapman singing … Leave It There, poignantly declaring the reality of our need to take our troubles - all of them … any of them - to God.
Highlight Passage: Isaiah 37:14 [NKJV] …
14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.
… Hezekiah knew that His God was the only One Who could save His people.
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Highlight Context … Isaiah 37 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Isaiah’a account of God saving Judah from the Assyrian oppressors.
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Reference Passage #1 …2nd Chronicles 7:14 [NKJV] …
14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
… God’s promise to His people, not mine!
Reference Passage #2 …Philippians 4: 6-7 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… God, thru Paul, lays out His promise of peace in times of peril.
My Journal for Today: … Our Daily Bread author, James Banks, used an historical. biblical illustration to teach on the reality of taking our trials/troubles, especially when we’re in peril, to God. He wrote: When the brutal Assyrian King Sennacherib was preparing to destroy Jerusalem, he sent a message to King Hezekiah saying that Judah would be no different from all the other nations he had conquered. Hezekiah took this message to the temple in Jerusalem, and “spread it out before the Lord” (Isa. 37:14). He then prayed and asked for help from Almighty God.
Soon afterward Isaiah the prophet delivered this message to Hezekiah from the Lord: “Because you prayed about King Sennacherib of Assyria, the Lord has spoken” (Isa. 37:21–22 nlt). Scripture tells us that Hezekiah’s prayer was answered that very night. God intervened miraculously, conquering the enemy forces outside the city gates. The Assyrian army didn’t even “shoot an arrow” (v. 33). Sennacherib would leave Jerusalem, never to return.
I was deeply moved by this message today, because our world is being oppressed and attacked by evil forces much like those of the Assyrians who were assaulting Judah and Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s day. And God’s remedy for Hezekiah was the same remedy for tribulation which the Apostle Paul gives to all believers in Philippians 4:6-7 …TO PRAY.
And that’s exactly what Hezekiah did (see Isaiah, Chapter 37). And so, this morning @ 2am, I was awakened, by God’s Spirit I believe, and led to write a prayer … a plea to God for deliverance, which I’m also being Spirit-led to pray on my knees before my God for the next 40 days. I will publish the prayer in a blog addendum on this date; but know that I will be praying in this way daily, on my knees, for the next 40 days, pleading with God for His deliverance from the forces of evil in this world.
Perhaps you might join me in this prayer and get others to similarly pray as did Hezekiah for deliverance in our time as God delivered His people in those days.
My Prayer Today: O, Heavenly Father, … I’m praying desperately for Your deliverance, dear Lord. Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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