Monday, January 21, 2002
The idea of building a Headquarters as a base for our ministry's mission sounded exciting - and very overwhelming. It took amazing financial miracles and the help of people who know so much more than I do. I did some building with Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs when I was little, but that experience did not prepare me adequately for the first real building project of my life. An architect drew the blueprint for what we needed the Headquarters to be, and that was great. But there I stood with this very big and detailed drawing - having no idea of where to start with what was on that paper. Thank God for the contractor that He brought into our lives! He knew what to do!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "A Blueprint For The Overwhelming."
I didn't know what to do with what was in front of me - but the contractor did! So, I put that blueprint in the hands of someone who knew exactly what to do with what looked totally overwhelming to me. That kind of handoff was what literally saved King Hezekiah and the Jewish people centuries ago in our word for today from the Word of God. And it's what can turn the thing that's overwhelming you right now into a miracle you'll never forget.
We join the Hezekiah story in Isaiah 36, beginning with verse 4, as the massive army of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, is rolling across the Middle East, conquering city after city. Jerusalem is next on his "conquest" list. The message that comes to King Hezekiah and his people is: "Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? ... How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?" Talk about intimidating! A seemingly unstoppable army, marching toward you.
Hezekiah receives a letter calling for his surrender, reminding him that no other people has been able to stop this army. The Bible says, "Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: 'O Lord Almighty...enthroned between the cherubim, You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth ... Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from His hand so that all the kingdoms on earth may know that You alone, O Lord, are God." That day the angel of the Lord put to death 185,000 Assyrians. The next morning, where yesterday the Jews had seen an overwhelming army, today all they saw was dead bodies.
There is a powerful blueprint here for how to handle what looks like it's going to overwhelm you. You do what I did with a building project that was way beyond anything I could do - you put it in the hands of someone who does know what to do with it. You "spread it out before the Lord." Now, I have done that physically with bills that were overwhelming our ministry - and Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord who provides, came through big-time. You may need to lay a picture of someone you love before the Lord - someone who seems like a spiritual "Mission Impossible." Maybe it's a letter or a medical report, an opportunity or a threat that you need to spread out before Him.
And pray as Hezekiah did, focusing, not on the size of the challenge, but on the size of your God. Celebrate the fact that your God is Lord over everything that looms so large in your life. The shadow of your great God will literally shrink the size of your giants!
Let go of the thing that's overwhelming you - what's it doing in your little hands anyway? Go to the Throne Room from which the galaxies are governed and take another look at the God you belong to. You've looked at and listened to that invading army long enough. It's time you placed that whole army in God's hands. Spread it all out before the Lord and leave it there. What you couldn't do in 50 years, your God can do in a day!