Jehoahaz – 2 Kings 13:4 -‘ So Jehoahaz pleaded with the LORD, and the LORD listened to him; for He saw the oppression of Israel, because the king of Syria oppressed them.’
This is quite a crazy prayer to have to write about – there seems to be hardly anything to pull out of the prayer except some massive questions. The situation basically goes like this – Jehoahaz was a bad king who sinned against God, so in His anger, God delivered the Israelites to the Syrians for many years. It’s then that Jehoahaz cries out to God for delieverance and God sees the oppression of His people and raises up a deliverer for them to set them free. You might think that God’s answer would cause Jehoahaz to repent and turn back to God, but no – he just carries on in the same old ways, in wickedness and idolatry. Jehoahaz is just one of a long line of kings who cause God’s judgement to finally fall on the nation Israel, scattering them throughout the world.
So to sum up – was there any reason that God ought to have answered the prayer of Jehoahaz – no. Was there any beneficial effects after God answered the prayer – no. So why did God answer his prayer? It’s because God shows a certain amount of grace and kindness even to undeserving people who don’t love, follow or obey Him, and He even sometimes answers their prayers. This leads us to this statement of truth:
Just because your prayer is answered, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are right with God
First and foremost, we know quite clearly that every answer to every prayer is purely grace – we deserve nothing from God but anger and judgement, and yet He chooses to lavish grace and mercy in hearing the cries of sinful people. We should never get to a point where we think that we have earned or deserved for God to answer our prayers, but should always be humbled at how incredible it is that God would answer the cries of wicked people like us.
However we also know that there is a clear principle in God’s Word – God always links our obedience with His promise to answer our prayers. The Bible tells us that our sin separates us from God so He won’t hear us. If we delight ourselves in Him and abide in Him, He will give us those things that we desire and ask Him for. The Bible tells us that if we are walking in fellowship with God – walking in the light, confessing our sin, and following Him, then we can be certain that God will hear and answer our prayers. He won’t always answer as we like or hope, but He will always hear and do what’s best for us in response to our prayers. What an incredible encouragement that ought to be to us as we come and seek God with a clear conscience, knowing that we are walking with Him.
However, there is one final piece to this jigsaw – as I said above, just because one of our prayers is answered, it isn’t a sign that we are definitely walking with God. Sometimes God chooses to answer the prayers of people like Jehoahaz who are nowhere near Him. It can be quite common to hear people leaning on their answers to prayer as an evidence that God is with them, but it is obvious from their lives that He is not. Even for us as Christians it is so easy to get caught up in all of the answers to prayer that God gives us, and forget that the reason God has saved us is to be in relationship with Him. The greatest joy we can have as Christians is not just to receive the blessings that God can give us, but to receive Him Himself – not the gift, but the Giver, not the blessing, but the One who is able to grant us blessing beyond what we can imagine, if only we would come to Him and live in that place of right relationship wiht Him. May the Lord help all of us as His people to keep short accounts, and stay in that place of real fellowship with our Saviour.