Don’t Fear the Future, Pray!

INTRO

Welcome back to our series, Anxious for Nothing. In this series, we’ve been following the story of a man named Hezekiah. He was king of Judah and despite facing stressful and anxiety- producing moments, he was a great leader and a man of great prayer. We are learning how we can pray through our anxious moments. We started this series by learning about Hezekiah’s background and learning how it’s been isn’t how it will be. Hezekiah changed the direction of his life by focusing on worshiping God first. Then, last week, we saw a moment that didn’t exactly go as planned, but Hezekiah prayed to God, knowing God knows our heart. We learned that we aren’t defined by how it’s going, we are defined by who we are. Today, things are going to get intense for Hezekiah. Open to 2 Kings, chapter 18, verse 19,  

Here is the background. The Assyrian Empire was growing in power in the region, we saw last week, they had conquered Samaria, the capital of the ten northern tribes of Israel. Assyria wasn’t done, now they threatened to take over Judah. Their army was invading cities in Judah, Hezekiah tried to pay off the King of Assyria, but they kept coming. Now, their army was closing in around the capital city, Jerusalem. The king of Assyria sends his field commander to Jerusalem to get Hezekiah and the people of Judah to surrender. Talk about anxiety!

An Anxious Situation: 2 Kings 18:19-25

2 Kings 18:19–25 NIV

19 The field commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah: “ ‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: On what are you basing this confidence of yours? 20 You say you have the counsel and the might for war—but you speak only empty words. On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me? 21 Look, I know you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him. 22 But if you say to me, “We are depending on the Lord our God”—isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship before this altar in Jerusalem”? 23 “ ‘Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them! 24 How can you repulse one officer of the least of my master’s officials, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 25 Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from the Lord? The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.’ ”

Wow, what a tense moment. While we can appreciate how anxious this moment might have been for Hezekiah then, you and I have our own versions of this.

Examples of anxious moments:

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When we face deeply anxious moments, we need to ask this question: What is true?   

In our anxious moments, what we face is a lot like this speech from the field commander. It is a mix of many different messages, some true, some false, all rolled together and all presenting itself as true. Let’s look at the various parts of his message.

The Truth.  [Build as a list]

Hezekiah was resisting the Assyrian Empire, instead of trusting them and making a deal with them, he and all of Judah were trusting in God. It is also true that Assyria was conquering many different nations at this time and they were rolling and appeared unstoppable. That was all true.

The Misrepresented Truth.[Build as a list]

It is also true that Hezekiah tore down the high places of worship and told all the people to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem. But the commander shares this as if what Hezekiah is doing is being less faithful to God. He is being more faithful to God, but the commander misrepresents what is happening to cause a sense of angst among the people.

The False Promise. [Build as a list]

When the field commander says that if Jerusalem makes a deal with Assyria, he will give them 2,000 horses, he is mocking them, he really isn’t going to give them weapons and strengthen them. But even if he would, it wouldn’t be the right solution. False promises produce anxiety because it asserts a promise from a worldview we don’t share. Assyria based their power on their weapons and soldiers whereas God’s people were not to put their hope in material things, like weapons, but to hope in God. As Psalm 20:7 says:

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Psalm 20:7 (NIV)

To the Assyrian worldview, what will save is power, chariots, weapons, brute force, terror. To the people of God’s worldview, what will save is God Himself. What the field commander said was designed to produce anxiety: “Look, you don’t even have chariots!” But the people didn’t need chariots; they had God.

The Lie. [Build as a list]

Here is the lie. God didn’t tell him to attack and destroy Jerusalem. Yes, God used Assyria to attack Samaria, Israel to the North, but not Jerusalem. Notice, this lie comes at the end, having been layered by truth, misrepresented truth, and a false promise. To the undiscerning eye, this sounds believable. It is tempting to buy into this lie because of how subtle it is, but if you are aware of how the lie works, you can spot it.

The same is true in our lives. When we are feeling anxious, there are voices, often in our own head, telling us lots of things, some true, some misrepresented, some false promises and some lies. But when we stop and ask, “What is true?” it can help deal with reality.    

Let’s say you are feeling overwhelmed by work, a class, or a relationship. What is true is you have a lot which needs to be done, more than can be accomplished in a day. That is true. The misrepresented truth is you have to do it all. It feels like you have to do it all, it feels like you have no help, but that isn’t fully true. Others are likely more willing to help than you realize, you just don’t want to ask, and other things could be dropped, you just don’t want to drop them. The false promise of all this, of course, is that your sense of self worth will be stronger once you do it. The false promise is you will be defined by the outcome, and more accomplishment means you are more valuable. The lie, then, is the unspoken sense of dread that if you fail, you’ll be viewed as a failure. That isn’t true and it isn’t even spoken but subtly layered into the pressure you are experiencing.

The question is, when we face these moments, what do we do about it?

A Non-Anxious Response: 2 Kings 18:26-30

26 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, and Shebna and Joah said to the field commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”

Quiet the Anxious Voice: 2 Kings 18:26 One of the first things we can attempt to do when we are facing anxiety is to quiet its voice. Here the leaders ask the field commander to speak in Aramaic so the rest of the people in Jerusalem who are stationed on the wall won’t hear what is being spoken. This was a fair request, the field commander and the people Hezekiah sent are both representatives of their kings. They were sent to strike a deal, to come to a solution and resolution about the situation, and it was common courtesy to negotiate and discuss it in private. They ask to speak privately so anxiety won’t spread among the people. When we are facing anxious days, quieting the anxious voice might look like cutting off certain social media influences, stopping certain news agencies’ feeds, or backing away from specific YouTube channels, or pulling back from interacting with certain people in our life.

But what do you do if that isn’t possible? Assyria wanted the anxiety to grow, so he said:  

27 But the commander replied, “Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the people sitting on the wall—who, like you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?”

28 Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! 29 This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you from my hand. 30 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord when he says, ‘The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’

Well…that got worse! Now, what do you do when the anxious voice has gotten louder?  

Silence Starves Anxiety: 2 Kings 18:36

Skip down to verse 36: But the people remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, “Do not answer him.”

If you want to put out a fire, you smother it, so it doesn’t have any oxygen. Once you cut off the air, the fire dies.

A lie which goes public is the same. It is one of the most counter-intuitive responses, but when lies are being spread about you publicly, our instinct is to defend ourselves, explain ourselves, explaining what is true and what is untrue. And it almost never helps. It just causes the lie to spread. It adds fuel, it gives it more air. Instead, being silent can often be the best response. When you are dealing with an anxious person in your life, at times not responding to their anxiousness can help bring calm and prevent you from being pulled into anxiousness.

On a personal level, silence helps too. When we are feeling anxious, taking time to be silent with God, in prayer, helps us to come back to what is true and listen to what is true amidst all the other voices.

By not responding to the lie of the field commander, it starved the lie. The field commander had nothing to go on, he didn’t know what part of the message, if any, connected. He didn’t know if he rattled the people or not. He had no information to go on. If the people had freaked out or responded defensively, he would have known he was successful in producing anxiety. But, the anxious message suffocates in silence.

This still leaves us wondering, what do I DO when facing anxious moments?

Ask Others to Pray with You: 2 Kings 19:1-4

When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the Lord. 2 He sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 3 They told him, “This is what Hezekiah says: This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to the moment of birth and there is no strength to deliver them. 4 It may be that the Lord your God will hear all the words of the field commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to ridicule the living God, and that he will rebuke him for the words the Lord your God has heard. Therefore pray for the remnant that still survives.”

Hezekiah’s request for prayer included three parts.

1. Be honest about how you feel.

When people living in this time wanted to show distress or anguish, they didn’t make a social media post, they tore their clothes to publicly display their brokenness. I love how honest he is. Notice, what Hezekiah is responding to is a threat and a lie, what was spoken to him wasn’t fully true. But it did cause real anxiety within Hezekiah. He was honest about how this made him feel. This is instructive for many of us. When we are feeling anxious, we often don’t say anything or admit it. We try to be tough or pretend it isn’t bothering us. If someone asks us, “We are fine.” Not Hezekiah. He was a mess and he admitted it. Look at the language he uses: a day of distress and rebuke…the time for hope to be born only we don’t have enough strength to bring it to light. When we are honest about being anxious it helps break some of anxiety’s power which seeks to isolate us and make us feel alone.

2. Seek God’s actions over human affirmation.

Hezekiah is honest about his anxiety, and his prayer request isn’t a form of affirmation seeking. There are times when we ask people to pray for us, when we really aren’t looking for prayer, but for affirmation: “…so this project at work is overwhelming, the deadline my boss gave is totally unrealistic, she is new to the industry and doesn’t understand how things work but made promises to senior leadership and now I’m responsible!”  While this might seem like a prayer request, it isn’t really, it is a moment for people to say, “Oh, your boss is wrong, you are right, this isn’t fair…” But not Hezekiah. He realized affirmation won’t remove anxiety. This is the lie of the affirmation culture in which we live in the West. We believe if we are affirmed enough, it will lower our anxiety. But it doesn’t. It might make us feel better in the moment, but affirmed or not, it doesn’t change the core issue at hand. Hezekiah wants God’s action.

Notice, the desire is God’s action. At times, we might even want to pray because we want our actions, but Hezekiah wants God’s actions. He was seeing reality for what it was and realized he had nothing left to do, he and the people of Judah were firmly and fully at the mercy of God, but his desire was for the LORD’s will to be done. In our moments of anxiousness, we are to come to this same place. “LORD, your will be done!” This type of surrender is an anxiety busting prayer because it takes things out of our hands and recognizes they are in God’s hands.

When Hezekiah says, “as when children come to the moment of birth and there is no strength to deliver them” he is describing a sense of helplessness and surrender, it is now up to God. The reality is it is always up to God. But in certain moments in life, reality becomes more apparent to us.

3. Pray for Faith.

Hezekiah is asking for prayer for the remnant that still survives. The term remnant is a term used throughout the Old Testament; it speaks of the remaining. In times of faithlessness, there has always been a remnant of people who remained faithful to the LORD. The remnant are expressed as small, insignificant in terms of human power, faithful to the LORD and His Word, unwavering in their faith, but weak in terms of human standards. Even the term, remnant, gives us this unimpressive image of what is remaining, like when you’ve had your morning coffee but there just a bit left over, the remnant. By asking for prayer for the remnant, Hezekiah is specifically asking for God to be faithful to those who have remained faithful to Him. This is not a generic, “Oh, pray for us.” This is a bold request of “Pray for our survival, pray we stand strong in our faith, pray we don’t fail the LORD, pray we put our hope in God, not man. Pray we see God move.”  While it is good, and proper, to pray for specific outcomes, this prayer is a prayer for specific faith.

What does this all mean for us? In the face of our anxious moments, start by asking what is true? Then, quiet the anxious voices and starve the anxiousness in silence, then pray. Have others pray with us and for us but be honest in prayer about what we are feeling and experiencing. Pray for God’s outcome, not ours, His will, not our will to be done. And pray specifically for our faith in God.

CONCLUSION