Hezekiah's Request

Isaiah 38 is a very interesting chapter.  The Lord told Hezekiah that he was about to die from the sickness that he had and so he needed to get his “house in order.”  But Hezekiah prayed earnestly to the Lord and “wept sore,” and it is as if the Lord changed His mind: “Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years” (Isaiah 38:1, 3).  It seems odd that the prophet Isaiah could give him a prophecy that would subsequently be changed upon the request of Hezekiah.  Perhaps, though, the Lord’s statement that he would die and not live was really meant to be a declaration about what would happen to Hezekiah without any intervention.  The natural course of events was that he would die because he was so sick. Without the Lord’s hand, He would not have recovered from his illness.  And perhaps the Lord told Hezekiah about his death because he wanted to see what was really in his heart.  In other words, maybe He wanted to grant Hezekiah the extra 15 years of His life, but He needed to know that Hezekiah was really going to appreciate the gift and use them well.  During those last “extra” years was the attack by the Assyrians in which the city of Jerusalem was nearly taken, and it was certainly critical that the righteous Hezekiah was the king at that point instead of his very young (and later very wicked) son Manasseh. 

                This story reminds me of the famous statement in the Bible Dictionary: “The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them.”  Surely this blessing for Hezekiah was what the Lord wanted to grant but it required that Hezekiah appropriately seek the gift and ask for the Lord’s help.  I think that the story highlights the fact that we can indeed have an impact on what happens to us in our lives by putting our faith in the Lord and seeking His blessings.  We of course can’t always control what happens to us, but the Lord will often grant unto us our desires when we ask in faith with all our heart.  Enos wrote about his own experiences: “And it came to pass that after I had prayed and labored with all diligence, the Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith” (Enos 1:12).  We are not the “master of [our] fate” or the “captain of [our] soul” as William Henley suggested in his famous poem, but we can follow the “Captain of [our] soul” as Elder Orson F. Whitney suggested, and seek diligently for blessings at His hand that He is only waiting for us to request.