Trusting God in (Financial) Trouble | Trust-Onomics

Hey, what up?

It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.

Welcome to our podcast.

I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.

I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.

Enjoy the message.

Simon Sinek said this panic causes tunnel vision.

Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily access the situation and see options.

We're talking today about trusting God in financial trouble, or really just any trouble, and I want to start with this basic idea that sometimes panic exacerbates an already bad situation.

It was already bad, but then panic made it worse.

So historians tell us that this is one of the things that went wrong during the stock market crash of 1929.

People started to just sell, sell, sell out of panic and it made the whole situation worse.

We're also told that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster I don't know if anyone saw that television series on HBO is phenomenal, but one of the things that they did wrong was they were panicking and it slowed down their already bad communication and it made that disaster worse.

We've all experienced.

Probably at some point you've made a situation even a little bit worse by panicking.

Maybe it was you got a poor grade and maybe then you cheated on the next one, but that actually put you in a worse situation because you got caught.

That could have been it.

You might have just been thinking this conversation you're going to have with your boss when you finally tell her off.

And then one day you decided to do it and it really didn't feel near as good as you thought and things just got worse at work.

Maybe you got fed up and you just quit one day and then you realized, oh, my situation is not approved.

This is actually a worse deal.

Maybe you went all in on a really expensive thing.

Maybe it was a car, maybe it was something else, but it was something that, upon further reflection, you're like that was not a good idea.

I was panicking at the moment and it felt like it was going to solve a problem, but it really didn't solve a problem.

Maybe you embraced a divorce.

That the truth is.

You got a bad shake at that man.

You got a bad result of that deal because you just wanted to get through it.

So bad, but you were so much pain and you were panicking.

You just wanted to be done, that now you regret what you said yes to.

Maybe maybe, like me, at some point you've posted something on social media because you were boiling with anger and then you tried to make it better.

And it didn't get better, it just got worse, because you began to panic about what people would think.

And now it's going to take a little while to rebuild that reputation.

Here's what we want to know.

Even when we've done a lot right a lot right when we do sometimes even just a little bit wrong it can cause a lot of trouble, even when we did a lot right we're going to look today at a king, one of the kings of Judah.

He's one of the descendants of King David and he was a good guy.

He did a lot right.

In fact, the Bible really gives him a lot of props.

It says, hey, man, this guy did so much right.

He won battles that had not previously been won.

He tore down none of the kings before him had done this.

He tore down all these idolatrous worship statues and pillars and made sure hey, no more, our nation is not going to do this anymore.

He gets a lot of applause in the Bible and yet we're going to see for as much as he did right.

There's just one or two things.

He panicked and it made things a whole lot worse.

We're going to learn how to trust God with our finances because that's the series that we're in Trust Dynamics.

Part of Trust Dynamics is trust.

We've got to trust God even when things are really, really tough.

This is a little bit personal to me because I have been in not only tough situations but tough financial situations.

Many of you have heard Kenzie and I early on.

We had some tough stuff early on in our marriage where we just didn't really know how to manage money.

We didn't know how to do that right and I found myself needing this sermon back then.

I hope that it is a little bit helpful to you in that way.

So, king, sorry Josiah, it's Hezekiah.

Hezekiah is who we're talking about.

If I said that wrong, sorry, josiah is also cool.

He's in a couple of generations.

What you've got to know is Hezekiah was so awesome that people began to wonder.

They began to wonder is this like the second David?

Because there's been this prophecy, there's been this thing that we've understood.

There's another David coming and he's going to make everything better.

He's going to restore right worship to the nation and then, finally, we'll be back in the position we were with King David.

In fact, jeremiah prophesies about this Jeremiah 39, it's not in your notes, just listen.

Instead, speaking of that time, they will serve the Lord, their God, and David, their King, whom I will raise up for them.

Now, what you've got to understand, and biblically speaking, is David doesn't return from the dead.

That's a prophecy, that's typology about King Jesus, who is a new and better David, and God is prophesying about him in the past.

One day, he himself will raise up David, he himself will raise up Christ and then he'll finally put everything back together the way it's supposed to go.

But people don't really know that yet.

All they know is there's supposed to be this other David and they're wondering is Hezekiah the other David?

Because he's just done so much right?

We're wondering if he's the guy and, to his credit, he's done a lot, even without a lot of mentors.

There's not a lot of kings before him.

We're actually good kings.

So I mean probably some of you know this Like it's one thing when you've had great models, you've had great examples of obedience for you, you've seen people do the right thing, when you haven't seen anybody in several hundred years, that's got to be pretty hard to do the right thing, but he doesn't.

He goes ahead, steps up to the challenge.

Even when one does a lot right, however, we can still get a lot.

We can still get some things wrong and cause a lot of trouble.

When you get in trouble, it's time to actively trust God.

When you get in trouble, we all get in trouble, we all make mistakes.

We all get into situations.

Oh man, I didn't plan on that.

When you get into that, you can feel bad about it if you want to, but after that it's time to actively trust God.

This Hebrew word, trust batak.

It means not only to trust, but it means to be unsuspecting.

That's one of the definitions.

Unsuspecting, that means like it wouldn't occur to me that God would be trying to do me wrong.

It wouldn't occur to me that God is not trustworthy.

I just wouldn't.

I'm too childlike to think about it, to think in that direction.

But it also means S Parsons confidence in when we're really trusting God or trusting somebody, we're putting our confidence in them.

We're saying, oh, I'm so confident that's going to happen.

In fact, it's not even a deal anymore.

I don't even need to think about it, because I'm so confident that they're going to follow through on their word.

I just don't want to even bother my head with it anymore because it's a sure thing it's going to happen.

Now.

Active trust is different than passive acceptance.

Passive acceptance is just like well you know, hey, man, there's nothing you do.

What are you going to do?

Just accept it.

I'm not saying there's not times we need to just accept it.

But that's different than active trust.

Active trust puts confidence in God and says well, man, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know this God is going to work it together for my good.

I know this God's going to be faithful, he's going to fulfill all of his promises in Christ and even when I've done bad, he's still going to do me good.

That's who he is and I put confidence in that.

So let's learn a little bit about Hezekiah.

There's going to be a lot of reading today, and so I need you to give me a lot of amends during the reading.

You know I always shout amen during reading, but I need it just for me.

So do me a favor and keep shouting amends or right in the belly.

That might be weird during the reading, but we'll see.

Starting in verse three of chapter 18, hezekiah did what was pleasing in the Lord's sight.

Well, one sight brightness.

Well, pleasing in the Lord's sight.

Just as his ancestor David had done, he removed the pagan shrine, smashed the sacred pillars, cut down the Assyriples.

He broke up the bronze servant that Moses had made.

Remember that bronze serpent that some of you remember in book of Numbers?

Moses makes his big staff.

Everybody looks at this staff and they'll get healed, which is the type of Christ also.

He made that, but they start worshiping him.

So Hezekiah has got to get rid of that.

Verse five Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel.

This is an amazing testimony.

There was no one like him among the kings of Judah, either before him or after his time.

He remained faithful to Lord in everything and he carefully obeyed all the commands the Lord had given Moses.

So the Lord was with him and Hezekiah was successful in everything that he did.

Wow, going great so far.

He revolted, amen, thank you.

Yes, yes, it is.

He revolted against the king of Assyria and refused to pay him tribute.

Okay, back up.

King of Assyria is the superpower in the area.

Okay, these are the guys you don't mess with, and, in fact, other nations have to give them tribute, really, just so they don't come in and just get angry with them and crush them, okay.

So it's kind of like a sign of respect.

They give money, sometimes they give goods, sometimes they even just give hostages.

They'll do whatever a less powerful king has to give tribute to the more powerful kings, just to stay on their good side.

And so, hezekiah, one day he's just like no, I'm not going to do that anymore, and we might say, hey, maybe he's just trusting God, maybe it was like I shouldn't need to do that because God's going to take care of me.

We should also know that the cousins of the folks who live in Judah, the Israelites okay, this is a time when the kingdoms are split, they don't always get along with the Israelites, but the Israelites have also rebelled against the Assyrian king, and so maybe they looked at them.

Sometimes we look at other people like, well, hey, man, they did it, they got away with it, maybe I'll do it too, but this is going to ultimately come back to bite him.

Okay, he didn't seek the Lord about it.

Well, he didn't, and that's a big deal.

In case you don't know, if you're new to the Bible stuff, god wants us to seek him as much as we can within the context of our understanding of him.

Okay, so at first that might just even feel like your conscience.

When your conscience is telling you, know about something, know about something, that is God usually using your conscience to say, eh, don't do that.

As we advance and we start to get into God's word, it even trains our conscience further and we begin to understand like this is the primary way we would say God speaks to us.

This is the primary way God speaks to us.

But hasn't kind of asked the Lord in this case.

He didn't wonder like I wonder if I should really do this.

I know I do trust God, but is God asking me to like, take this step?

Is this a wise thing or is this just a random idea that came into my head?

He didn't ask.

Well, a few years goes by and the king of Assyria then rolls in and crushes the Israelites, his cousins, his neighbors, just take them out and there's a tremor that happens there.

There's like, oh my gosh, like they revolted and now they just got crushed and now they're being deported to Assyria.

And so he starts to freak out a little bit.

Oh, maybe that wasn't a great idea.

Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

He's freaking out a little bit.

So, verse 13, in the 14th year of King Hezekiah's reign, king Sennacherib he's the main bad guy of today King Sennacherib of Assyria came to attack the fortified towns of Judah, that's Hezekiah's towns, and conquered them.

So he rolls in, he starts taking over these towns.

King Hezekiah sent messages to the king of Assyria at Lakers that was one of the towns I've done wrong.

I'll pay whatever tribute money you demand if you only withdraw, but the king of Assyria.

He then demanded a settlement of more than 11 tons of silver and one ton of gold.

To gather this amount, king Hezekiah used all the silver stored in the temple of the Lord and the palace treasury.

Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the Lord's temple and from the doorposts he had overlaid with gold and he gave it to the Assyrian king.

Uh-oh, does that sound like panic?

A little bit it sounds like I made a bad decision.

Now I'm panicking because of the results of that decision and I might be making more bad decisions.

That's what's happening with Hezekiah right now because once again, like he didn't even pause, he didn't be like, oh my gosh, whoa, that must have been a bad move.

Let's go see what God says about this.

Didn't do that and he did like previous kings before him.

Dude, he just went in and he just rated all the stuff that was really God's stuff and he gave it away.

It's a dangerous path when, in reaction to trouble, we just become reactionary.

I mean, you know, if you've seen people do this, I know people that got married as a reaction.

I know people have bought things that they never should have bought as a reaction, like they're just trying to solve a problem but they're actually maybe creating problems by doing that.

Or we make a bad decision.

Then we double down, even though part of us knows like this was dumb.

Dude, get out of this, get out of this now, as fast as you can Do it.

So Senecharib's commander in chief, like his second in command, goes and he said verse 19,.

Then the Assyrian kings chief of staff told them to give a message to Hezekiah.

So they're conquering his towns.

This is what the great king of Assyria says.

He's speaking for the king.

What are you trusting in that makes you so confident?

Do you think that mere words can substitute for military skill and strength.

Who are you counting on that?

You have rebelled against me.

He's wondering, like man.

You know when you were revolted.

I know you gave me all that stuff, but I'm not over it.

Do you think Egypt is?

He's talking about neighbors.

You think Egypt's going to help you?

They're nothing.

I conquered them.

They're nothing.

I'll get rid of you too.

Do you think you're strong enough?

What do you got?

I beat everybody.

Verse 22, we'll skip down, but perhaps you'll say to me we are trusting in the Lord, our God, but isn't he the one who was insulted by Hezekiah?

Didn't Hezekiah tear down his shrines and altars and make everyone in Judah and Jerusalem worship only at the altar here in Jerusalem?

That was actually a good thing.

God did want him to do that.

I'll tell you what.

Strike a bargain with my master, the king of us, here.

I'll give you 2,000 horses if you can find that many men to ride them, which would be kind of like saying I'll give you tanks, enemy, if you can fill them with drivers.

That's what he's saying.

What's more, verse 25, do you think that we've invaded your land without the Lord's direction?

The Lord himself told us attack this land and destroy it, not true?

So then he's speaking, and he's speaking to all these people, and the people of Judah can hear him, like they understand he's speaking in Hebrew.

And so some of the staff of Hezekiah say, hey, man, don't speak in Hebrew, we don't want anyone.

We don't want them to get scared unnecessarily.

And he's like no, I want them to hear me.

They need to know Verse 30,.

Don't let him fool, speaking even to the people.

Don't let him fool you into trusting in the Lord by saying the Lord will surely rescue us.

This city will never fall into the hands of the Assyrian king.

Don't listen to Hezekiah.

These are the terms the king of Assyria is offering.

Make peace with me, open the gates and come out.

Then each of you can continue eating from your own grapevine and fig tree and drinking your own.

Well, he's going to deport them.

He's going to take them away from God's land, the land that God put them in, and he's saying hey, man, just surrender.

Look, you made a mistake.

Now just lie down.

Essentially, don't do nothing.

Don't trust in the Lord, your God and anybody that tells you to trust God.

They're an idiot, because it doesn't work.

We've crushed everybody that has come against us.

What do you think your God is going to do.

And, my friends, we've got to recognize this as we begin to mature in our walk with Jesus Christ.

We've got to recognize that little voice you know the Bible presents.

There's a spiritual backdrop, there's a spiritual reality that's actually happening all the time.

We don't notice it, but it really is spiritual forces of darkness and they speak into our ears.

Sometimes you don't notice them at first, but they speak things that are doubt.

They speak things that are a challenge to God's goodness.

They accuse God.

They say he's giving you a bad deal, man, you can't trust him.

He's not going to do anything for you and even if he wanted to, nobody beats me, it'll just go the way of the enemy.

He attacks our trust in God.

Have you noticed that happening?

Have you noticed any little voices?

They say dude, dude, come on, be real.

It usually sounds like this be realistic, be realistic.

Are you special?

Do you think you're the one that the King of Heaven is going to do this for?

Be realistic.

That's an attack, that's an affront.

That is this Assyrian commander-in-chief screaming into your ear, even when you don't recognize him.

Verse 33,.

Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the King of Assyria, verse 35,.

What God of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power?

So what makes you think the Lord can rescue Jerusalem from me?

His accusation is dude hate.

To inform you, god ain't even able.

He can't even do it, even if he wanted to.

He's a weak-sauced God, and you know.

That's what this planet wants to tell you.

That's what it wants you to believe.

Hey man, you mean that weak-sauced Christian God?

Isn't he dead by now?

Like, aren't we all over him?

Isn't he just kind of like gentle lambs in Christmas presents?

That's what he's for, right?

Oh, baby, watch out.

He's powerful, but the people are afraid.

And so the staff, they go tell King Hezekiah.

When King Hezekiah heard the report verse 1 of 19, he tore his clothes and put on burlap and went into the temple.

Lord, this, putting on burlap, tearing your clothes, they're a little bit more demonstrative culture than we are.

They wear their emotions not just on their sleeve but everywhere.

And so what he's messaging to everybody?

I am sad and I am repentant.

We shouldn't have done this.

And so that's what he's doing.

And he sent his staff Eli Kim, the palace administrator.

She even had the court secretary leading for his all dressed in burlap, to the prophet Isaiah.

This is they sent him to the prophet Isaiah because they want to hear from God.

Hey, we need something from God now.

We're very discouraged and we need to know what God says about the deal.

They told him.

This is what King Hezekiah says.

Isaiah, today is the day of trouble, insults, disgrace.

It's like when a child is ready to be born but the mother has no strength to deliver the baby.

Oh, that's sad, but perhaps the Lord, your God, has heard the Assyrian chief of staff sent by the king to defy the living God and will punish him for his words.

Oh, pray for those of us who are left.

They've got all these towns there's.

Some of us left.

Isaiah the prophet, would you pray for us?

And if you got anything from God for us, we'd love to hear it right now.

Well, the first thing you did is right.

This is where he starts to take correct action.

Active trusts looks like number one in listening prayer.

Active trusts, trust looks like we want to be active about it.

We enlist prayer.

Isaiah, pray for those of us who are left.

People who want to operate in active trust know.

Okay, god works by faith.

God works by trust.

In other words, for some reason, in some way, our trust actually releases God, in some way we don't totally understand it to do what we're asking him to do.

But when you compound that with lots of people asking and releasing trust for God to do, it just makes it more powerful, it has more sway, it has more pull, like God is quicker to respond.

If we will do that Now, here's the problem.

Honestly, man, it's humbling to ask for prayer, like it's humbling to go to somebody and say I can't really fix my life.

I have a problem that I can't do anything about.

Would you go to God for me as well and see if he can do something for me?

And that might be you.

Maybe you need to enlist some prayer support.

Maybe you've got financial problems that you need to enlist prayer support about.

Maybe you've got student loans.

Maybe you're planning a family or you're realizing, oh, I got to do something about retirement more than I was doing.

Maybe you're in a lot of debt and you're in a lot of trouble now, like at first it was okay, but now it's out of hand and you're starting to think, oh, I need help.

Well, can I encourage you to follow the wisdom of Hezekiah.

Enlist some prayer, enlist some people.

Go to some people that you're fairly confident they'll actually do it and ask them to pray, and be one of those people that when people bring you a request, you're going to write it down somewhere, you're going to put it on the fridge, put it somewhere, you're just going to find it again.

Yes, I'm going to pray for this with regularity.

Hezekiah gives a little bit of reassurance.

Verse five after Hezekiah's officials delivered the king's message to Isaiah, the prophet replied say to your master this is what the Lord says.

Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king's messengers.

Listen, I myself will move against him and the king will receive a message that he is needed at home.

So he will return to his land where I will have him killed with a sword.

That's how God rolls man.

He's like hey, this is not a problem for me.

I know you think it's a problem.

It's not a problem Like I am good.

Now, to be fair, this is a little bit of a vague prophecy.

It doesn't say when it's going to happen.

It doesn't say if there's not going to be more bloodshed to happen yet.

He doesn't know, and sometimes we get a little bit of encouragement, right, like you've come into church or you watched something on YouTube and it was encouraging.

Or you talked to a friend and they said something.

It was like, oh yeah, that's I'm taking.

Well, I'm taking that, I'm good, I'm in, I'm, I'm a receive that.

And for a minute it was good, because you only really hung onto it for a minute.

But then you, you left church and you got back into the day today and you were like, uh, this still looks bad, though.

I remember God said something.

Now I don't remember what it was, but this is bad.

We do that, just like Azakaya and the peeps did it.

Verse nine soon afterward, king Zenechorib received word that King Taraka of Ethiopia was leading an army to fight against him.

This guy's getting wars on all sides of him because he's trying to conquer everything.

Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent messengers back to Azakaya in Jerusalem with the message so he's like I'll be right back, I can go kill this dude and then I'm going to be back for you.

So he sends this message, this message to King Azakaya of Judah don't let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you with promises that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria, isn't that isn't that bold?

It's only God deceive you.

God is a liar and he's trying to deceive you.

Verse 14, after Azakaya received the letter from the messengers and read it, I mean, can you imagine that, like it's a death threat, is, I'm coming for you and I'm so powerful I'm going to go get in a fight first and then I'm going to come kill you.

Like you're hardcore if you want to go fight somebody before you go kill somebody, but that's the threat level.

It was threat level.

Midnight he read it up, he went up to the Lord's temple and spread it out.

Before the Lord Takes this letter, he gets it, spreads it out before the Lord and Azakaya prayed this prayer before the Lord.

Oh Lord, god of Israel, you're enthroned between the mighty cherubim, you alone.

Those are angels.

He's referencing the ark.

There there's like gold molds of angels that are hovering over the ark.

You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth.

You alone created the heavens and the earth.

Bend down, oh Lord, and listen.

Open your eyes, oh Lord, and see.

Listen to Senechorib's words of defiance against the living God.

It is true, lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations and they've thrown they've thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them, 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, oh Lord, our God, rescue us from his power.

Then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, oh Lord, are God.

We said active trust looks like enlisting prayer, and then it looks like taking inventory.

He starts to get real with God.

He says God, you know, it's true.

By the way, this all happened Like the Assyrians did come in and they crushed everybody.

They're really strong and God, I just I don't want to wear rose-colored glasses.

See, when God's asking you to trust, he's not asking you to pretend things that are true or not true.

He's very aware that they're true.

He knows, yes, that's part of the story.

The thing is, god knows the rest of the story.

Okay, so we don't need to pretend with God, we don't need to fake anything.

That's not faith.

When you're faking stuff, he just talks to God exactly how it is.

God, let's take inventory.

We are genuinely outnumbered.

We are genuinely going to get hurt if we keep going.

But God, you see everything.

You see.

Here's what's awesome about God.

There's no God like this.

Here's what's awesome about it.

God sees the big picture, but God sees the minutia of your life right now, like the little granular things.

God is just as aware of those as he is of the timeline of the entire universe.

Dog gone.

The Greeks and Romans could not come up with a God like that.

That's the real God, that's who he is and that's the God you get when you trust Jesus Christ, when you put your confidence in Him.

So he admits the truth of the circumstances and sometimes, my friends, okay, so let's use financially.

Sometimes we just got to get real and say, do I even know all the problems?

Like, let me write them down, let me get my little notepad out or your tech or whatever you're using.

Hey, let's write down.

This is exactly what's wrong.

This is how much I'm in debt.

This is the specific problem that I would love God to help me solve relatively soon.

These are the things I need and, god, it might be that part of the situation we need to fix on.

I'm seeing all these problems of taking inventory, but then I get to the end of the page and it looks like it might be me.

It's not just the problems, see, sometimes we're asking God to fix the problem and God's like thank you, I'm glad you're not opening up to the fact that you have a problem.

But it's not just what's on the page, it's your theory about the world.

There's ways you're doing life that don't lead to blessing, that don't lead to success, that lead to fights, that lead to being bound up.

Sometimes we've really got to have the courage to be able to say oh, it's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me, it's me, I'm the problem.

We need to be able to say I am part of what is wrong here.

I've been approaching life this way and that don't work.

And God, see God, he's so awesome.

He doesn't just want to command us.

He's such a good father, he wants to develop us Right and part.

Hey, you won't get around this.

If you want to keep growing in Christ, one of the things you and I are going to have to do is we're going to have to say I will only keep growing if I can admit I was wrong.

Admitting you were wrong is part of progress.

If you can't say you were wrong, you're stopped man, you're stuck.

You can't move forward any further until we say I was wrong.

So we get real clear about what do we want?

We ask questions like how bad is it?

We ask questions like are the things we need to fix about me?

That was some of my problem early on when I was trying to manage money is I just did not have understanding I was spending in ways that lead to no money.

That's how that works, and God could give me more money, but I would just spend it again, and so we had to fix me.

There had to be changes and those take time.

That isn't an overnight, so maybe God delivers relatively quickly, but the development takes quite a while, and God answers some of that through people.

God answers some of that through people.

We need people to help us understand even what is wrong.

So you can't just go into your closet and figure out everything is wrong with you.

I'm sorry you can't.

It'd be nice, because then we wouldn't have to like admit we were wrong about anything.

We wouldn't have to swallow our pride about anything.

But when we get in a relationship with people, they become a blessing, they become an extension of God's grace to us.

Hey, can I just talk to real quick.

Let me talk to the ones who you're probably an introvert.

You're not really fond of being around people, so, like you might even come, or maybe you're watching online and you know you're gonna make a B line for the door as soon as possible.

Like it was amazing, you got here and you want out soon.

I feel you, man, cause I'm an introvert too.

But I gotta tell you there are problems that God has destined for you to get out of if you will get around people, because people are part of the solution.

Can you see how we're reviewing?

The other day we were just looking at the timeline of our lives and all these times that we've walked together.

We're just marveling over the incredible blessing that God has brought us into over time.

But as we look back on that timeline, we could just pick out dashes where I'll tell you what man, if we wouldn't have been in community and that person wouldn't have offered to help us, we would never have made it past that.

And then that person would have offered to help us.

And then that person and you know how we knew most of those people they were the people of God.

They were the people that we'd just been in relationship with and they were close enough.

We were like help and they were like gotcha.

Let me pull you up, my friends.

Don't try to get victory over all your problems without people.

You need the people.

It's harder, yes, it is worth it.

Absolutely.

That's what we need.

We need to learn to be real with people.

Active trust looks like enlisting prayer, taking inventory three praying yourself, not somebody praying for you.

We needed that, we already enlisted that, but we need to pray ourselves.

After Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it, he went up to the Lord's temple and spread it out before the Lord.

He went.

All he did before was send people to Isaiah.

That's all he did.

But now he's like okay, it's bad enough, I'm going, I'm gonna pray myself.

And you know, as God seeks to develop us, one of the things he's gonna be pushing for, he's gonna try to convince every one of us who's a follower of Christ.

I need you to keep learning how to pray yourself.

Pray yourself, that means you get away, you find time, and I know we've got a lot of reasons why we don't do it.

Some of it's like you know what?

I just can't.

My time just doesn't help me with that.

I just can't manage my time right, or I've got all these other responsibilities and I just can't do it, or, you know, I just have a real hard time.

You know I can never focus enough and so I just never get around to it.

And what you're kind of saying a little bit sometimes, if you're honest, is I think God gives me a buy because of this.

He'll solve the problem anyway.

So I won't pray and I would just suggest to you it's possible.

Well, maybe things just aren't bad enough yet.

Maybe you don't realize yet how helpless you are without you grabbing hold of God.

See, prayer is helplessness.

Prayer is saying I can't do this, god, I am so desperate I will stop being king.

Come over and get on my hands and knees and say, god, I need you to help me.

So this is an example that really happened.

Okay, so I was in charge of doing the money, which was silly in my early twenties, but it's all we had, man.

And so I would get to this place and I would take the bills and I would mimic Hezekiah.

I was like all right, god, look, I got problems here.

They all are.

They're not enough money to send to these people.

I'm gonna pray for myself.

I'm gonna do it.

I've asked people to do it.

I'm gonna do it.

God, in Jesus' name, you see all these bills.

I'm asking you to come solve this problem.

But I recognize the problem is not just I need these bills, but there's something in me that is not managing your money the way you want me to, quite yet.

So I'm laying hands on the bills, but let's not forget to lay hands on me.

Fix me, guys.

I'm not saying there's necessarily really any spiritual power, but there was something that activated my faith when I mimicked Hezekiah and said I'm believing God for some reason.

God, you're gonna see this.

You're gonna see that I recognize my problems and I'm asking you to do something about them.

I don't know what you need to lay out on the ground.

I don't know if you need to write it down.

I don't know if you put it on your desk or put it on your dashboard or what you need to do, but I wanna suggest it would have been nice if Hezekiah had he started there rather than finally found himself there Right, like if he would have done that before he withheld tribute to the king, like I don't know.

God's sovereign, of course, and God's will ultimately came about.

But I'm just saying I believe there's problems I might have avoided if I had started with prayer rather than praise God.

He used it anyway and I ended up with prayer.

So Isaiah is used by God and he answers and he sends this prophecy of punishment for Zenecharib and prosperity for Judah.

Punishment will just quickly go through verse 20, and now he's talking to Zenecharib and because of your raging against me and your arrogance, which I have heard for myself, I will put a hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth and I will make you return by the same road on which you came.

Verse 34 is really important.

For my honor and the sake of my servant, david, I will defend this city and protect it.

Really important, hezekiah.

We could say we could make the case.

I think pretty well, he was a great king, like.

He was a really great king.

He did a few things wrong, he got a few things wrong and it caused a lot of difficulty for him, but he was a great king.

But God did not answer him on behalf of Hezekiah.

God did not do this because, like well, you know you're really good, so I'm going to do it for you.

That's not why he did it.

He did it.

Why did he do it?

He said it right there in verse 34.

For my own honor and for the sake of my servant David.

That's why I'm going to answer your prayer, hezekiah.

For my own honor, meaning I'm the God who keeps his covenant, I'm the God who keeps his promise, I'm the God who keeps his word.

I keep my word to you even when you don't keep your word to me.

That's who I am.

I'm not going back on who I am.

God says I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it for my servant David.

Now, I really believe it's not outside the realm of good biblical theology to say, yes, I'm sure there's some sense where you know the Father is remembering David's heart of devotion to him on earth, but I really believe in this passage he's talking about his servant David.

Slash the new and better David Jesus, because that's really New Testamentally why he does anything.

He does it for the sake of his servant Jesus.

So anytime you read in the Bible, if you ever read this for the sake of my servant David, I'll do it, probably for David, but definitely for Jesus.

Jesus is the why and, my friends, this is where the freedom is, because you don't have to bring God your bills and say, god, just do it because I've been a little better lately.

No, you don't have to do that.

God do this for Jesus's sake, do it for him, because he covenant with me.

We cut covenant when Jesus was killed on the cross and that blood was applied to my sin and it not only took away my sin, it gave me Jesus's favor.

So because I have that favor, I'm tapping the favor now.

Lord, I could use that.

Let me tap into that right now.

I need you to come and rescue on behalf of Jesus, and God will answer because of his love.

Here's bonus point number four.

I thought I heard Amen right there and all right.

Bonus point number four Real quick.

Keep doing good and wisdom while under threat.

Keep doing good.

See, senechor did not die right away, he does die.

Verse 36,.

Then King Senechor, up of Syria, broke camp and returned to his own land.

He went to the capital of Nineveh and stayed there and one day, while he was worshiping the temple of his God, his sons came and killed him.

Didn't happen right away.

Did happen.

God fulfilled his promise.

But the word to us is keep doing good and wisdom under threat.

The threat doesn't immediately go away and we say I'm going to act like, I'm going to be confident, like God is actually going to do it anyway.

I haven't seen him started yet, but I'm going to do it and we see this.

See, the reason I'm telling you this is because we don't always know how God's going to do it.

He'll deliver us.

We just don't know how.

See, there might be the David and Goliath version.

The David and Goliath version is God's talking to God.

Just gives David, give him the courage.

Just go David, go take care of this for me.

Go cut this giant's head off, do that.

And then sometimes God says to us I'm giving you the strength, go do it, just take care of your problem.

Other times it's like a Peter problem.

Peter has this failure thing.

He denies Christ and he's really down and he doesn't do anything until Christ restores him.

He didn't get restored right away.

He had to kind of figure out like, oh, I'm not all that, I had to fail, and sometimes that's what we have to get first.

Oh, I'm not.

I'm not a snicker if I can just walk around and take everything I want and do whatever I want and say whatever I want.

Sometimes that takes a while and sometimes it's like Hezekiah.

God is like don't worry about it.

Literally, just let go of it.

Just have confidence.

I am going to do it.

I don't know which one it might be for you today, all I can say is my friend, no matter what you did, no matter how much trouble you got into, no matter what happened or what panic has caused other things, active trust says it's time to trust God.

Right now.

I'm going to act like he's on the throne, like he saw this coming, like he's got a plan and it's really cool and he understands the big picture, but he also understands my minutia.

He's going to be faithful and I don't have a foe that he's afraid of.

Let's pray, father.

Thank you so much for your word.

Thank you for preserving it for us.

Thank you for communicating to us through it.

I pray for everybody right now who, man?

They're kind of like at the end of the line here and they don't know what they're going to do.

Father, in Christ's name, I'm asking that you would meet their need.

I'm asking, just like Hezekiah asked would you rescue?

However, you do it like breakthrough.

Do something that would not have happened.

Breakthrough and rescue, lift up, give them what they need, teach them the lessons, give them the courage or help them to just let go and bring about the right ways of God.

And may you do it, lord, for the sake of your servant Jesus, and may you fill our mouths with praise that you are the true God, the living God, the wondrous God, the God who is forever faithful in Jesus' name.

Hey man, I hope someday we get to meet in person.

Thanks again for listening.