“The Prayer and Action of One Recovered” (Isaiah 38:9-20)

Today is “Recovery Awareness Sunday,” and what we just read together is the prayer of recovery that Hezekiah prayed after he was healed by God. It’s one of my favorite stories. 

Hezekiah was one of the good kings of Judah. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord…He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Ashera. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made [going back to the wilderness story in Numbers 21]” because the people of Judah had started to worship it as an idol (2 Kings 18:3-4).

Second Kings 18:5 says, “[Hezekiah] trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him.”

Despite all of that, Hezekiah got sick. We don’t know with what exactly, but it was probably cancer—and it was definitely terminal. 

Isaiah came to him and said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.”

Hezekiah reacted like anyone would given that information. He despaired, and he prayed. He prayed, “Please, God, remember me.” 

Here’s the first amazing thing about this story: God listens to our prayers!

The Creator of the universe hears you when you petition Him, and He is affected by your requests. We serve a God who cares for us and about us.

God remembered Hezekiah and said through Isaiah, “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.” God even moved the sun back in the sky about ten minutes to assure Hezekiah that He had answered his prayer. 

That’s amazing. We see in this story that God can heal, and He still does. We wouldn’t have Recovery Awareness Sunday if He didn’t. 

Every one of us here—if you have surrendered to Jesus—has been miraculously healed and recovered from a death sentence by the grace of God through faith in Christ. 

If you have been convicted of your sin and recognized it as the certain-death spiritual cancer that it is, then you have prayed a prayer like Hezekiah did. You’ve begged God for salvation, and He heard you. He cast your sins behind His back.

Hezekiah was healed and vowed to declare God’s faithfulness and play worship music every day for the rest of his life.

But almost as soon as Hezekiah was healed, he got cocky.

God healed Hezekiah’s cancer, but he still had sin in his life. Hezekiah destroyed the big, obvious idols—the Ashera, the bronze serpent, the high places, etc.—but Hezekiah did not destroy his heart’s idol of pride.

Just because you trust God doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen. And just because God is faithful when things are bad doesn’t mean that you will be faithful to remember Him when things are good. 

Deuteronomy 8:11-14 says,

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and rules and statutes…lest, when [things are good] your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of…slavery.”

We were all slaves to sin. We all had the cancer of sin, and it may be in remission. Sometimes these are the obvious sins: big, cancerous tumors. 

Today is Recovery Awareness Sunday, and as some of you know, I’ve experienced my own miraculous recovery. I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I put my trust in Jesus when I was four, and it was legitimate. Just an aside, when a child professes faith in Christ, it should be taken seriously and developed. My whole life, I’ve known God’s commandments, rules, and statutes. When I was sixteen, I even felt called to ministry.

But I got scared. I ran. But if I’m being honest, I didn’t run because I was scared. I ran because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. 

I had a low view of myself, thinking I was inadequate to do the work God called me to do. But in application, I had a lower view of God, because I did not trust Him to elevate or equip me in order to obey. 

The qualifications and standards for a pastor are high, and I did not feel like I could reach that bar. So instead, I went to the bars (see what I did there?). I drank, and I drank pretty hard.

I disguised the problem by using the gifts God had given me to serve Him by serving myself. I found work in which alcohol was part of the job description—songwriting, making up stories, and scripting advertisements. But I had a burden for people, and I guess I figured if I couldn’t save them, I could at least entertain them and maybe kill myself in the process.

I did everything I wanted to do exactly the way I wanted to do it, but I was unfulfilled. I still had that burden for people. The drinking got worse because it was the only thing that would quench the Spirit. I felt more and more unworthy of God’s love, so I ran harder, but He wouldn’t leave me alone. 

And so I kept drinking. That was my cancer. But you can’t get rid of God, or rather, He won’t get rid of you. Once He has you, He will never let you go. 

“Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence?” (Psalm 139:7)

Even if I made my bed in hell, God would find me, and God was in the jail cell with me when I was arrested for my third DWI with a blood/alcohol content of .492.

For context, a BAC of .3 means coma, and .35 is fatal. Mine was fifteen points higher than that. Almost 50 percent of my blood was alcohol. I should be dead, but I lived. God wasn’t done with me. He wasn’t done with Hezekiah, and He’s not done with you, and He’s still not done with me. 

But I wasn’t done running. In fact, I doubled down on the self-destruction. In the meantime, I got a lawyer, and they said the best deal they could get me was four years in prison. The DA wasn’t going to budge. 

It looked like I was out of time. And then Covid hit. The courts shut down. God moved time back for me like He did for Hezekiah.

Now, I’ll go back a little bit. By this point, I had lost just about everyone that mattered to me. But my mom still cared. She never stopped praying for me. I think Augustine said something like, “The tears my mother cried in her prayers watered the seeds of salvation in my heart.” God hears our prayers and sees our tears. Let that be encouragement to you parents who have kids that are off track. Don’t stop praying for them.

Anyway, for her sake, I decided to try to clean up. So I went to this place out in the hill country where I could sober up for six months. And for some reason, I brought my Bible, even though I hadn’t read it in years. 

And at some point, I started reading the Psalms, because I knew there were 150 Psalms and I figured if I read one a day, it would be about five months, and the six months would be almost up. It was a way to mark the extra time. But once I started reading the Bible again, I couldn’t stop. I ended up reading through the whole Bible four times in those six months. And by the end of it I knew I had to really surrender to God, really make Jesus my Lord, and do whatever He asked me. 

Now remember, the last word I had on the DWI was a plea deal of four years in prison. But God had changed my heart. I had gratitude. Even if I went to prison, I was still redeemed. And I started to look at prison like a mission field. 

I wouldn’t be locked up with a bunch of people; a bunch of people would be locked up with me. And I would preach the gospel. I accepted that that might be my calling with gladness.

I think maybe that was one of the lessons I needed to learn. No matter where God chose to send me, I would go joyfully with purpose for His glory.

But I’m very glad that’s not what God had in mind for me. A little while later, I met Bethany, and her mom is a defense lawyer. She was able to work out a deal for me, and I never saw the inside of a jail cell again.

Y’all know the rest. I finished seminary to which I got a full ride, I moved to New England, and now I’m here. God equipped me every step along the way, even when I didn’t know what the next step was. When you compare my life then to now, you’d say the recovery is amazing. And it truly is to the glory of God. 

But just like with Hezekiah’s story, it’s easy to focus on the big, dramatic recovery—the cancer—while missing his ongoing transformation and sanctification. 

Some of us are less fortunate. Some of our cancers are harder to diagnose. Sometimes it’s more difficult to see the bitterness that’s meant for our benefit.

I know I’m still being sanctified and refined. God delivered Hezekiah from cancer, but his heart was still prideful.

Let’s return to Hezekiah’s story. The Bible says, “At that time…the…king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and recovered” (Isaiah 39:1)

Now, this would have been a great opportunity for Hezekiah to have a Gospel Conversation. If he had been familiar with our “15-Second Testimony” model, he could’ve said something to the king of Babylon like: 

“There was a time in my life when I was dying of cancer, and I felt hopeless. But God answered my prayers and healed me! Now I praise His name and glorify Him as the king of Judah.”

But Hezekiah didn’t do that. He neglected his promise to make God’s love and faithfulness known and to sing His praises every day (38:17, 19). 

Second Chronicles 32:25 puts it bluntly:

“But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud.”

Instead, Hezekiah wanted to boast in his health and earthly treasure. He focused on the recovery, not the One who recovered him.

When Hezekiah was healed, he became complacent. He became arrogant. He acted foolishly. He did not remember God, even though God had remembered him.

Isn’t that just like us? God delivers us, and we’re grateful for a little bit and play worship music every day. But then we forget. We get comfortable. We fall back into old habits or find new ways to grieve the Spirit of God. I may not drink anymore, but there are still aspects of my life that are being sanctified. 

We forget that we are all on borrowed time. God has either given you new life in Christ to sanctify you and use you to make new disciples, or He has so far mercifully sustained your life to give you time to repent. 

The big question I want to ask today—the question I had to answer and still ask myself daily—is this: What are you going to do with the time God has given to you? 

Hezekiah was given fifteen extra years on earth, and he squandered them. He forgot what the Lord had done for him. 

Hezekiah eventually died. His fifteen extra years ran out. His son Manasseh took the throne. Second Chronicles 33:1-2 says, 

“Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”

Just listen to the list of evils Manasseh committed: “He built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his sons as an offering…and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord…” (2 Chronicles 33:5-6).

We go from the best king Judah ever had to the worst king Judah ever had in one generation. And it was all because Hezekiah became complacent and failed to declare the Name of the Lord. 

Now, just for fun, let’s do a little math.

Manasseh was twelve years old when he took the throne. That means that he was conceived in that fifteen-year window of borrowed time that Hezekiah was given.

That means that if Hezekiah had kept his promise to “make known to the children [God’s] faithfulness,” or remembered the grace that he was given and not become proud, Judah may not have been plunged into severe darkness the way that it was.

But Hezekiah became complacent. He got comfortable. He wasted his time. He did not remember or glorify God. He did not make return according to the benefit done to him.

It’s easy to forget what God has done for us. It’s easy to become complacent.

So again, the central question is this: What will you do with the time God has given you? How will you use your time to glorify Him?

Ephesians 5:15-16 says, 

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”

Use this time to glorify God and tell others how they can find life in Him. The dead don’t praise Him, but you can! That’s why you live. 

And it doesn’t matter how badly you’ve messed up. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already botched your second chance, or third chance, of four-hundred and eighty-ninth chance. I abuse God’s grace in some way all the time. But God is still a God who saves. He forgives. Our Redeemer lives, and He is still sanctifying us. God can use your darkness to shine His light in others.

The story doesn’t end with Manasseh. The story ends with Christ.

“Whoever calls upon the Name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32). Even Manasseh. Even me.

God finally got Manasseh’s attention, just like He got mine. Second Chronicles 33:12-13 says that when Manasseh was in distress, he humbled himself before God, begged for salvation, and God heard him.

That’s amazing! God heard this awful man’s prayers and was moved. You are never too far gone from God that He cannot hear you and bring you back and use you for His glory. 

And this awful man, Manasseh, was used by God in an awfully big way.

Fast forward about 700 years. Matthew 1:10 says, “and Hezekiah was the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos,” and fifteen generations later, to Mary, the wife of Joseph, was born Jesus, who is called the Christ.

Each of us has been given time. God has either granted you new life in Christ or He has been merciful in granting you more time in your life to repent and be saved. 

You are never so lost that you cannot be saved, and you are never so dark that you cannot be used to glorify God. 

If you are still living in darkness, humble yourself before God. Do not wait to get better; let God make you better. Repent and believe. Call upon the name of the Lord. He will hear you, He will save you, and He will use you.

And if God has pulled you into the light and given you new life in Christ, tell your story. Give glory to God. Use your darkness to save others. 

I’ll end one of my favorite Bible stories with one of my favorite Bible verses, 2 Corinthians 4:5-6, 

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord…For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

God calls light out of darkness. Use your darkness to praise His light!

Proclaim Jesus. Be a light. And never forget what God has done for you.