FeedSheep Podcast

Unveiling the Power of Trust: Inspiration for Your Journey from King Hezekiah

• Dan Schilling • Season 1 • Episode 19

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What might life look like if you had the unshakeable faith of Hezekiah, standing firm even when faced with a formidable Assyrian army? What if you could experience miracles in your life, just like Hezekiah did when his faith in God led to a miraculous victory? Join us as we pull back the layers on the biblical stories of Hezekiah and Abraham, exploring what true faith and trust in God looks like. We'll highlight the power of obedience and trusting God during times of hardship, enabling us to thrive in our spiritual journey.

As we journey through Hezekiah's battle against Assyria, you'll learn about the power of trust and faith during trials. You'll discover how Hezekiah’s unwavering faith in God led him to stand firm, even when things felt impossible. We'll also draw a parallel between the deceptive message from the King of Assyria and the worldly temptations we often face, emphasizing the importance of maintaining our faith in God even when the odds are stacked against us.

Let's dive deeper into the significance of building trust and experiencing miracles. We'll share personal experiences, challenges, and powerful biblical stories that underscore the importance of faith and trust. Together, we'll work on building our trust muscles, enabling us to not only hear and follow God's voice but also thrive in our spiritual walk. Don't forget to subscribe and share your thoughts and experiences to join us on this remarkable journey of trusting and relying on God.

Dan Schilling:

Hey, welcome to the Feed Sheep podcast, where we help you hear God's voice, follow His lead and thrive as a disciple. I'm Dan Schilling and I'll be one of your guides. Now let's get into today's topic. Hey, welcome to Feed Sheep podcast. Thanks for joining us. We're back again today. Michael man, it's always good to be with you, you too.

Michael Blue:

Great to get to dive in again and keep looking at trust.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, yeah, well, we're going to continue. We've been really just saying, God, show us how you continue to help us on this journey, to trust you and to look at your word, and so we've been looking at a number of passages. We started a couple of sessions ago talking about the Deuteronomy 8. And really, again, what we're trying to accomplish through our time is how do we hear God's voice, follow His lead, thrive as disciples and recognizing that trust is a big issue? And last time we started to dive into the area of trust and some of the things that Hezekiah, king Hezekiah, was processing through, and we talked about faithfulness.

Dan Schilling:

That faithfulness is one of those first keys that Hezekiah said in 2 Kings 18. This was in verse five and this was our verse that Hezekiah trusted the Lord. There was no one like Him among all the kings of Israel, either of Judah, either before or after His time, and he remained faithful to the Lord and everything. So the goal for us is how are we going to encourage one another daily in this journey? How do we look at what the scriptures say about this area of trust? And so we're going to dig a little deeper into this topic today.

Michael Blue:

So can't wait, looking forward to it.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, we'll play for us.

Michael Blue:

Yeah, let's do it. God thanks so much for this opportunity that we get to come before you and we get to humbly submit and listen and learn, and so I just pray that you would teach Dan and I, and you would teach the listeners, what it means to trust you, and that we would have the confidence to step out in trust as we seek to know you more deeply and, ultimately, we seek to thrive in relationship with you. Jesus' name, amen, amen.

Dan Schilling:

Michael, I remember a few times ago we were talking about the trust muscles and that's really the focus of our time today and about how we talked about how we're doing the P90X and how that was one of those things that really stretched us physically at that point in time and I wouldn't try it again, not at this stage of life. I don't have enough time.

Dan Schilling:

I don't think I have the willingness to be in so much pain that I can't even walk to go to the bathroom. Hardly that hurt so bad oh yeah, yeah and yeah.

Michael Blue:

We don't need to go down there on a trip. Yeah, I couldn't do it again today.

Dan Schilling:

But the muscles. I believe the God wants us, whether physically our muscles are in shape now, but definitely what he wants for us are these what we're calling trust muscles to be built. And recognizing that, like many other aspects of our physical muscles, if we continue to keep ourselves isolated and not putting ourselves open, handedly in the hands of our good, good father, who's always trying to continue to mold us and fashion us, shape us more into the image and likeness of Jesus, and recognizing that many times, that's going to put us in a place where we need to trust him. And that place of trust brings us to one of the things we're going to look at today is a place of humility and say, okay, you know this isn't going to be easy, but I trust you. And one of the other aspects that, in the midst of this journey, that he wants these muscles to be built is so that when this time of testing comes, we see and know him as a good, good father and we know that he's going to provide, he's going to take care of us and not just the material things of life. But when we get into the gym we were just talking about a scenario, something I've got to do tomorrow with someone that really struggling in their journey and it's probably gonna be a pretty hard time, a conversations and things around it that I'm gonna need to trust him and so to have wisdom and insight and provision and trust that God's gonna protect me and watch over me and give me wisdom and counsel in the midst of that situation, so ready that our trust muscles are ready, so that when God calls us to something, we're not like oh you know like, but we recognize who's the source, who has the authority, whose authority we're under and where that's gonna lead us.

Dan Schilling:

So what are your thoughts?

Michael Blue:

Well, it's appropriate. Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach at my church, yes, and we're talking about Hebrews 11, which is, you know, the hall of faith, so-called right, and I was looking at really, 13 through 22,. But in 17 to 19 is where it talks about Abraham and Isaac and God testing Abraham as he told him to, commanded him to go and sacrifice Isaac. And as we looked at it, the word test there is really strengthened, and so you know, there's this idea of strengthening. That happens in obedience and so you know, as I studied it and thought about it and through our conversations, I kind of created a diagram. It's not that profound, but I think that trust and faith start in obedience and that's kind of like the lifting right and so. But what happens when I obey is that I actually see that God's faithful, I see that he does fulfill his promises. You know, Abraham was in that conundrum of how in the world can you fulfill this promise when you're asking me to kill the seed of the promise, Like?

Dan Schilling:

that doesn't work.

Michael Blue:

And so you know even when we can't see it.

Dan Schilling:

It's counterintuitive, right. I mean like something like that doesn't make sense yeah.

Michael Blue:

They can't reconcile, they're irreconcilable to us, like God had a way, obviously. And then, as we see God be faithful, it helps us, increase our faith or increase our trust, increases our longing to experience that nearness to God, in that trusting, which then I think leads us, which we see in Jacob's life, at the end of his life, is that he's bowing over the head of his staff in worship, right as he's blessing the sons, and so it leads us to worship, and then it leads us I mean we have like this cycle of obedience and God's faithfulness and increase. We worship and we just continue to grow in this and we do this. Testing or this strengthening occurs in these steps of obedience that can seem really, really hard, where we can't see a way through, but when we step into them, god has seen a way through and we see that he's faithful to take us through.

Dan Schilling:

Yes, amen, amen. Well, one other quick story here is this past year my wife is actually gonna be on here in a couple of weeks on the podcast here and I were talking this past week of just something the spirit of God had been working in her, helping her hear God's voice and follow, and she felt, you know, this past year of school not this current year of school, but the past year that the time for homeschooling was over. Now we've homeschooled, you know are all seven of the boys so far have all been homeschooled, some of them all the way through Now the older guys, the other ones. So she's been doing this for almost 20 years and sometimes you get going in that same pattern. But she knew inside something she's now a piece, and it was actually. It was starting to become more burden, you know. It wasn't fulfilling anymore, and so we started at the beginning of this early of this year, in January, february started looking at Christian schools and started looking and saying, okay, god, show us. And so, long story short, we got makes a way, he provides. You know, I'm thinking how are we gonna pay for this? And then God provides all these different opportunities and scholarship and everything. So it's like okay, god, thank you.

Dan Schilling:

But here's kind of the big thing was we were standing. I was standing talking to a guy outside of the school I had just met in conversation. He said well, you know that we turned away 700 families this year and that you know, like those moments where like wait what? Like 700 families and I clarified it with the wife later, I said I want to make sure I heard you. You said she said yes, not 700 people, 700 families, like multiple children per household, and we had just been in conversation with another guy. I said wow. He said I can't believe that you got all four of your boys in here. No-transcript, there's people even at this church that can get their kids in here. Like that's really amazing.

Dan Schilling:

And it's like you have that moment. You're like, wow, god, you, you provided something that makes no sense. But my wife just kept believing this is what God was leading and that he was, she was trusting him. You know cause? You're like we don't have the money for that, we can't do this, we can't do that. And we're going to look at a story today about Hezekiah when it's like we're going to like we're in trouble here. You know, god, we, there's no way this is going to work out, and so I feel like for us, it was just one of those moments like a, a holy moment of like, oh my gosh, god, you, you provided in a way there's no way that could happen, but you doing that when there's there's 1400 people, there's two kids in each family, you know, got turned away.

Michael Blue:

So, yeah, I didn't even know the miracle that it was no.

Dan Schilling:

I mean, that's the cool thing sometimes, right.

Dan Schilling:

Like and then when God reveals it just in conversation, you're like, oh my goodness God, and I really sure and I both said you know, when David in the second Chronicle says who am I and who are my people, I mean you would, you'd take care of us, like this. I mean that really was our posture of our heart, Like, oh my goodness, Lord, thank you so much. So I just I think it's again this journey that we're on and to encourage one another. Right is God has a purpose, he has a plan, and when we submit to him and we put our hope and trust in him to lead us, to guide us, even when it's like, well, I just can't, it ain't gonna work out, Like, trust me, just faithful, today, take the next step, take the next step. And so we're going to look at that story today as well.

Dan Schilling:

Good let's do it All right. So let's bring this up. We're going to give a little context here. We talked last time about Hezekiah. Again, he trusted the Lord. He has a great heritage of a mom who was Abijah. We talked a little bit ago that Abijah. I looked this up. She's the daughter of Zachariah, high priest. Her name actually means my father is the Lord, so Zachariah names his daughter this my father is the Lord, who she probably again as we said last time disciples, trains up Hezekiah in a way of loving and trusting and knowing God as his heavenly father, which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's good.

Dan Schilling:

And then we see here where we're going to pick up. I get this to scroll down here. We're going to pick up today. You and I were talking a little bit about if folks you want to read this and you can make your own decision here about Hezekiah strips the temple of all the things, sends it to King Sinachrib. It's still not enough. And we're going to pick up here then in verse 17, after Hezekiah is trying to do what's right he's trying to keep the kingdom kind of together and we're going to see here how the king of Assyria responds and then kind of pick up and see what Hezekiah and how he responds in the midst of that trouble. So let's start there. Good Verse 17.

Michael Blue:

Yes, verse 17, chapter 18. Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent his commander in chief, his field commander and his chief of staff from Lake-ish, with a huge army, to conquer or to confront King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. The Assyrians took up a position beside the aqueduct that feeds water into the upper pool, near the road leading to the field where cloth is washed. They summoned King Hezekiah, but the king sent these officials to meet with them Eliah Kim, son of Hokaia, the palace administrator, shabna, the court secretary, and Joah, son of Asaph, the royal historian.

Dan Schilling:

All right, so just a little story. So you say, ok, king of Assyria sends not just a few dudes, but he sends this as a huge army. So we're going to see a little bit of how big huge is to some extent. So so he sends this huge army and they're coming to essentially say you know what we're, we're going to show you for what you didn't. You know you weren't paying tribute money essentially on time and doing some things. And he tries to make it retribution, but apparently not enough. And then they call him out but he doesn't even go out to meet and he sends some kind of his key guys to go out and meet with the messengers from King Sinakarib.

Michael Blue:

So we think, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got the commander in chief, the chief of staff, you got the his best right coming at you and maybe, yeah, yeah, and you know, I imagine there's something going on with Hezekiah here too is not going out to meet, right, the king of Assyria didn't come, I'm not going to go out. So there's, you know, he's, yeah, a jockey.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's see what he has to say All right.

Michael Blue:

So then the Syrians, king, king's chief of staff, told them to give this message to Hezekiah. This is what the great king of Assyria says. What are you trusting in that makes you so confident? Do you think that mere words can substitute for military skill and strength? Who are you counting on that? You have rebelled against me on Egypt. If you lean on Egypt, it will be like a reed that splinters beneath your weight and pierces your hand Farrow.

Michael Blue:

The king of Egypt is completely unreliable. But perhaps you'll say to me we are trusting the Lord, our God, but isn't he the one who was insulted by Hezekiah? Didn't Hezekiah tear down his shrines and altars and make everyone in Judah and Jerusalem worship only at the altar here in Jerusalem? I'll tell you what strike a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you 2,000 horses. If you can find that many men to ride on them With your tiny army, how can you think of challenging even the weakest contingent of my master's troops, even with the help of Egypt's chariots and charioteers? What's more, do you think we have invaded your land without the Lord's direction? The Lord himself told us attack this land and destroy it.

Dan Schilling:

OK, things are not looking good. That's smack talk right there. That's like next level smack talk.

Dan Schilling:

We live in a culture a lot of smack talks is like, ok, here we go, right, that's my love, the Old Testament, like, come on, this is a great story. Like this is going on still today. People are doing stuff like this, right, like, oh yeah, I'll show you. So again, we look at this and Assyria come on, says, like you know, first of all, who do you think you guys are Like, who are you putting your trust in? You know, are you going to, you think you're trusting in what? Egypt? You know, like your big brother, you think he's going to take care of you? Like we've already destroyed them, so you don't have to, you can count on them. Are you trusting in God? Oh, you're one of those you know trusting in God. Huh, isn't you know Hezekiah, the one who, kind of you know, made everybody a little ruffled of feathers? You know, get them tearing down.

Dan Schilling:

We talked about last time the shrine, the altar, the share, the share poles, like I don't know about that. And, by the way, you know who actually sent us to come kick your butts? God himself told us to come and take care of you guys. So I tell you what you get some horses, and you probably don't even have 2000 guys to put on them. I'll send you 2000 horses so you can try to fight us. Your tiny little army. We brought our huge army. You got your tiny little army. Little bunch of grasshoppers Like what are you thinking here?

Michael Blue:

So, yeah, that's a, you know, in the picture of the gods of that time and how they even viewed it, right, I mean, there was, you know, to them, a plurality of gods, was, was, no, was what everybody pretty much believed. And so you know their God, israel's God, the gods of the shrines, you know one and the same at the end of the day, yes, right.

Dan Schilling:

Another little Jobu doll on the On the on the shelf right yeah lots of them.

Michael Blue:

Yes oh yeah, and you're got text to us too. We talked.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, yeah, which. As I was reading through this, I thought you know what, when you, when we're gonna see what here goes on the rest of the story, god may have told him to go do it. Sure, right, trap, yeah, like oops, you know? Like, oh, shoot, we thought we were coming because we were gonna and talking trash and whatever About it. Like, oh yeah, I had you come out of your pride and out of your arrogance and your foolishness, thinking you're gonna come Right, take home and you're mocking them. But really you're not mocking them, you're mocking me. But you know what? I already knew that. That's why I invited it down, thinking that you're coming to attack and destroy them.

Michael Blue:

Yeah, I'm like.

Dan Schilling:

Okay, so I let's, let's pick up in 26 and continue on the story.

Michael Blue:

Yeah, this classic response then, like him, son of Halkia, shabna and Joa said to the Assyrian chief of staff Please speak to us and Aramaic, for we understand it. Well, don't speak in Hebrew, for the people on the wall will hear. That's good. He's like hey, stop scaring everybody.

Dan Schilling:

Everybody's gonna wet their pants here if you keep talking like that. Just you know knock it off.

Michael Blue:

You're insulting us and, and they realize it, yes, but Sennacheribs chief is chief of staff replied. Do you think my master sent this message only to you and your master? He wants all the people to hear it, for when we put this city under siege, they will suffer along with you. They will be so hungry and thirsty that they will eat their own dung and drink their own urine.

Dan Schilling:

Now you talk about next level. I'm talking it's getting even, it's getting worse right like not only are we gonna destroy you, not only we gonna, you're gonna be so bad, so Decimated, you're gonna eat and drink your own waste.

Michael Blue:

So that's pretty bad, yeah. Yeah, I wonder, and I mean I probably shouldn't wonder in the middle of a podcast dance. I apologize, but that this man speaks Hebrew, yes.

Michael Blue:

I mean the trade language was aromatic and so that was the common language, that that most people would speak to one another from different countries. And Hebrew wasn't. They weren't a big people. Yes, I mean the chances of this. Perhaps it was a sojourner in the land of Hebrew. Perhaps you know he had a nanny yeah, the chances are. Maybe he was Hebrew, maybe he wasn't Israeli who had, you know, defected more or less to Assyria. Yeah and here he is.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, right, because that's happened right. I mean you, you have that throughout different times that they've been Sent away and under siege and under whatever else right.

Michael Blue:

Very well, just stayed behind. Like you know what these people are.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, if he was intelligent like you think, like Daniel Meshach, they were intelligent, right, they were smart, they were whatever and they were put in charge and doing different things. So you know, chief of staff smart guy, yeah, I. So, yeah, all right, so the talk's getting worse. Let's continue on the discussion here. What's what's what's coming?

Michael Blue:

next. All right. Then the chief of staff stood and shouted in Hebrew to the people on the wall. Listen to this message from the great king of Assyria. This is what the king says. Don't let Hezekiah deceive you. He will never be able to rescue you from my power. Don't let him fool you into trusting in the Lord by saying the Lord will surely rescue us. This city will never fall into the hands of the Assyrian King. Don't listen to Hezekiah. These are the terms the king of Assyria is offering. Make peace with me, open the gates and come out. Then each of you can continue eating from your own grapevine and fig tree and drinking from your own. Well, then I will arrange to take you to another land like this, when the land of grain and new wine, bread and vineyards, olive groves and honey choose life instead of death.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, it's so interesting when you think about how the ways of the world, things of whatever, like you know not only you know are you foolish, for you know, thinking that Hezekiah is going to protect you. And again, you have to understand the Assyrians were the world dominating culture at the time and so, like everybody, was being decimated by the Assyrians and we're going to see it again in a minute like the size of their army, the size of what their power and their authority and everything was going on. So you know, when the biggest bully in town says, hey, give me your lunch money and you don't like, hey, you know you're going to take one of the worst beatings out back here in just a minute, you know. And so don't don't let the little pipsqueak dude start piping up telling you how you're not going to get beat up and I'm going to speak in your, your native language here Like this is what's going to happen. So don't be fooled and you think about this. Bring this back into our own life sometime Again.

Dan Schilling:

We have an adversary who obviously is always trying to steal, kill and destroy right, assault us, always tell us that God's not trustworthy, you're not whatever. But we also sometimes have people around us when God calls us to something. And you have to remember, in this story, hezekiah broke a long standing tradition of disobedience, and so it's not like this was they had some generational turn toward obedience, and so these guys know so like they're trying to play on some of that as well. Right, and there's sometimes in our life where people around us you know like, hey, you know you can kind of do your own church thing, but don't take it too far, like don't take this trusting in God so far Don't.

Dan Schilling:

And I know you and I both have made some decisions in life, and I know there's people even in our life that are close to us to kind of look us like I don't know, that doesn't sound like God to me. You know they're Christians, they're well-wisher, but they're not understanding. You know what I got, this is what God's asking me to do. And I think there's times like this, as a Kaya is standing for righteousness, wanting to do what's right, and these guys, you know the outsider's coming and saying you're stupid, we're going to, we're going to demolish you for this. But I tell you what you know, we'll just, we won't beat you up completely. So just walk out, surrender, right, you know, open the gates, come on out, here's the terms and and we won't have to completely decimate you We'll take you somewhere else that you can start over and have good things, but don't be trusting God. You try to put your trust in in the ways of the world, ways of man Right.

Michael Blue:

Right, yeah, I mean, I think you get, you get to in there, you get the promise. I mean, and this is such the way that that, I think, happens when we have this temptation to trust in other things and to look at other things is the promise that that God makes is, you know, abducted by the other people. So you have this promise of your own great vine and fig tree Right, this is a phrase that you see in scripture sitting under your own vine and fig tree, and it's a, it's a picture of safety, it's a picture of provision.

Michael Blue:

Yes, and whatnot? Right, but it's a provision from God, you know, giving us each our vine and fig tree to have fruit and food and shade. And you know all of these, these things, and you're saying, look, you want these things, come find them here, like it will give them to you. Your God can't give them to you. Yes.

Dan Schilling:

Yeah, right, it's all is a well. You got water, you're going to have grain, new wine, bread, vineyards, olive groves, honey, and to me, this big, interesting cause Deuteronomy also has the same. You know, I said before your life and death, choose life, or do guys say this one time is like God gives you a multiple choice test and then gives you the answer I said before your life and death, choose you know, like a life a life.

Dan Schilling:

Be deaf, you know. Choose a, you know, and yet what happens is the majority of us still choose be, which is I'm going to do it the way the world or do it. Hey, thanks for watching the FeedSheep podcast we're going to. Because this discussion was so rich and encouraging to Mike on our both, we decided that we should break this into two episodes, and so next time, what we're going to do is give you several things to think about in your journey and building your trust muscles. As we've seen in the story of Hezakiah, we're going to continue on and see what God does, and what he wants for us is to experience that type of miraculous event in our life where we see God intervene, and so I just want to encourage you to tune in. If you haven't already subscribed to the YouTube channel or to your favorite podcast platform, leave us a comment If you would as well. It always helps us, encourage us. I want to encourage you on your journey to hear, follow and thrive. God bless you.

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