Thursday, September 11th, 2025
2 Kings 19:14:
14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. 15 Then Hezekiah prayed before the Lord…
As I read this passage recently, I couldn’t get past the word “spread”. Hezekiah didn’t just hold that nastygram from Sennacherib in his grip and pray about it. I love that he laid it bare before the Lord. He was not going to cover up or control any part of it. He was like, “Look, Lord, this is not good, and we need to talk through every part of this wicked situation.”
Do we pray like that? While we all know that God knows everything that happens to and around us, there is something deeper that happens when we are free enough to spit it all out before Him. We are opening the biggest file cabinet drawer we own and pulling out those things that we thought would never again see the light of day. We know you know Lord, but we want our soul, spirit and flesh to be in unison in declaring this thing wrong or hurtful or whatever word works for the situation.
That word spread in the original Hebrew language also means to break in pieces or to break (to give) bread to anyone (Strong’s). Interestingly enough, our communion message at church this past weekend was on a very similar topic. Luke 24:30-31 says:
30 Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him…
It was in the breaking of bread that their eyes were opened. There is something powerful that happens in the spreading out of our junk, our worries and our hurts before the Lord. When we take the time to break bread with Him and commune with Him, He opens our eyes more and more to see another dimension of what He is doing and what our part is in that.
Final Thoughts…
It’s amazing to me how many times I find myself thinking about a situation but not realizing that I haven’t actually prayed about the situation. When we just think about something we are trying to analyze and figure it out on our own. When we pray, we are breaking it all down before our Creator, recognizing our need for Him and surrendering our grip of control. This is the kind of prayer that opens our spiritual eyes to see the way, the truth and the life.