Upset With God’s Plans for Us – Isa 38
At some point, when most would have considered him to be middle-age, Hezekiah contracted a sickness that was about to kill him.
Like most of us, he was upset and disappointed. He prayed to God, reminding him of how he had tried to walk before God with a perfect heart and tried to do good in God’s sight. He wept and cried many tears.
God heard his prayers and saw his tears and decided to give him fifteen more years of life. This promise was confirmed with a sign of the sun going backward ten degrees. And Hezekiah wrote a psalm to praise and thank the Lord.
But the placement of this account in the book of Isaiah implies
The next chapters talk about Hezekiah’s pride and mistake. We also know that, during this time, his son Manasseh was born, who would be one of the worst kings Judah would ever have.
So, even though he got what he wanted at the time, later he may not have wanted what he got.
And, we can make the same mistake. We can grow frustrated with God’s plans. We can get angry because we don’t feel God is giving us what we deserve. We can pray for God to do something different with us. And He just might allow us to get what we want or to do what we want.
But the question is, is that what’s best? Wouldn’t it be better to surrender? Wouldn’t it be wiser to say, Lord, this is what I want, but not my will, thine be done, like Jesus? (See Luke 22:42.)
How often do we whine and complain and grow bitter toward the Lord about how He deals with us? Instead, we should be willing to accept both good and ‘evil’ from the hand of the Lord.
As Job said to his wife when she told him to curse God and die… ‘shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ (Job 2:10)