Lessons from Hezekiah: How to get God to turn your situation around quickly. 🙌🏾💡

2 Kings 18:5-7, 2 Chronicles 29:36

The Bible says that of all the kings of Judah, there was none like Hezekiah who held fast to God and obeyed His commandments. In fact, God so loved his obedience that He extended his life by 15 yrs (2 Kings 20)! Even when he had pride towards the end of his life and showed off his possessions to the Babylonians, the punishment for this didn’t happen in his lifetime. Did you know he was also the one who destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses made? The Israelites had kept it and been worshipping it for all those years! 

One of his first moves was to clean up the house of God, followed by a series of “acts of faithfulness” (2 Chr 31:1) – all of which culminated in God moving quickly to turn around the situation of the people of Judah. All explained in 2 Chr 29, summarized below:

1. He decided from the beginning to be completely obedient to God, obeying His word and doing what it says. v. 2 (Also see 2 Kings 18:5-7)

2. He restored the house of God to its place of glory. They cleaned it up properly and set it up orderly. v. 3-19

3. They confessed and truly repented of their sins. v. 20-24

4. They praised and worshipped God with gladness, singing and instruments. They bowed and worshipped God. v. 25-30

5. They gave generously (first fruits, tithes and offerings) to the work of the Lord – 2 Chr 31. Their generousity was so great that there weren’t enough priests to skin the sacrifices. v. 31-35

6. As they restored the service of the house of God, they rejoiced because God moved quickly through a series of events to restore the blessings to His people. v. 35-36 🙌🏾😇

7. Finally, Hezekiah and the people kept the Sabbath and other religious festivals (NB: while Sabbath keeping remains unchanged i.e. from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset [Mark 15:42; Mark 16:1-2], these other Jewish festivals are no longer necessary today following Jesus’ death on the cross as they were “shadows”). 2 Chr 30.

Have you struggled in your Christian walk? Does it look as if your life is surrounded by troubles and anxiety of all sorts? Your income is never enough? It seems like you keep going round in circles? The first step is to firmly decide to know, serve and live for God…daily. The above steps are therefore a true guide to live by. 

Haggai 1 v. 5-7 and verses 9-11 shed even more light:

• “Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.
• “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the olive oil and everything else the ground produces, on people and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.”