Weeping Will, oh!

“And said, Remember now, O LORD, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.” (Isa 38:3 AV)

Sometimes, the perfect will of God is a hard thing to bear.  Hezekiah was just told that he was to put his house in order because the illness of which he was suffering was terminal.  What disturbed Hezekiah the most was not his death.  Rather, he had no male heir.  There would be no son of Hezekiah to carry on the throne of Judah.  No lasting legacy to the revival which Hezekiah brought to Judah.  No legacy of faith that withstood Assyria to pass on to his seed.  No grandchildren.  No wonder Hezekiah wept sore.  This was God’s will for him.  A hard reality for sure.

Living for Jesus is not for the faint of heart.  There is a difference between being a believer and being a disciple.  The disciple is learning to conform to true Christlikeness.  He or she is learning the mind of Christ and found in First Peter and Philippians.  They are learning that true discipleship means a death to self.  This is why the first step of true discipleship is to deny self.  There are costs to following Jesus that many will never know.  There are private costs.  These are unfulfilled desires or dreams.  The cost of missing out on the blessing that others enjoy is perhaps one of the hardest to bear.  Resentment, like Hezekiah’s, is way too easy a temptation.  These costs are seldom welcomed.  They are seldom a cause for joy.  Persecution is easier to endure, in one sense, because we see the result of that costs.  But these private costs are the hardest.  Unless we walk in the shoes of those whom God has asked to sacrifice, we will never understand.  I have been blessed with three sons who love the LORD and are serving, or have been trained to serve, the LORD in full-time service.  They have private costs that no one will ever know.  They don’t publish it.  They don’t share it.  But they are there.

Hezekiah made the mistake of asking the cost be removed.  God heard him and granted him fifteen more years.  Two years later, he would father a son who would bring Judah down to final judgment.  Even though Hezekiah seemed not to be too disturbed by this fact, it had to eat away at him.  As he waits for the final consummation of all things, he has to bear the fact his son, born two years after God removed the cost for service, was the king that destroyed what was left of Judah.  We may feel sorrow over those things God asks is to surrender.  These things are necessary.  These things have to be.  It hurts and it hurts deeply.  But fighting it from the emotion of resentment, asking the LORD to remove the cost may indeed increase our sorrow even more.  Sure, Hezekiah rejoiced at the birth of a son.  Now he had an heir.  But at what cost?  Greater than the cost of not having a son to begin with!