This spring I’ll be four years into what I’m calling ‘my Hezekiah blessing’ – named from the account of God healing King Hezekiah of a life-threatening illness and adding years to his life. The story is told in 2 Kings 20:1-11 and amplified in Isaiah 38:1-22 by the prophet Isaiah. Both accounts begin similarly. Here is the TLV rendition from Isaiah (Is.) 38:1. ^“1 In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill. So Isaiah the prophet son of Amoz came to him and said to him, ‘Thus says Adonai: Put your house in order. For you are dying, and will not live.’  ² Then he turned his face to the wall and prayed to Adonai saying: ³ ‘Please, Adonai, remember how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in Your eyes.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.”  

After that point, the different Biblical writers include different details. (2 Kings is attributed to the prophet Jeremiah.) So I’ll weave my way between their accounts, boldfacing the different inclusions and italicizing my comments.  

From 2 Kings 20 – Apparently, Hezekiah’s bitter weeping didn’t last very long, because verse 4 says, “⁴ Before Isaiah was gone out of the middle court … the word of Adonai came to him, saying: ⁵ ‘Return, and say to Hezekiah the leader of My people, thus says Adonai, the God of your father David: I have heard your prayer and I have seen your tears. Behold, I am going to heal you. On the third day you will go up to the House of Adonai. ⁶ Then …‘”

I paused there to highlight what Isaiah did not include – that God stated His intention to heal Hezekiah, and apparently to restore strength quickly enough that within three days he’d be able to go up to the temple. It seems to me that only then (after he went up to the House of the LORD) would the rest of God’s intention be actioned, as follows: “‘⁶ Then I will add 15 years to your life. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city for My own sake, and for My servant David’s sake.‘”

Hezekiah’s appeal and weeping may have tugged at God’s heart, but His response was actually predicated on His own purpose (defence of the city for His own sake) and faithful promise-keeping (to King David). Continuing from Is. 38:7 – “Now this will be the sign to you from Adonai, that Adonai will do this word He has spoken: ⁸ Behold, I will cause the shadow on the stairs, which went down with the sun on the sundial of Ahaz, to turn back ten steps. So the sun’s shadow went back ten steps on the sundial on which it had gone down.”  And at verse 22 Isaiah just mentions that Hezekiah had asked the question, “What is the sign that I will go up to the House of Adonai?“

Thankfully, 2 Kings gives more details of the interactions between Hezekiah, Isaiah and God at that point. 2 Kings 20:8ff reveals: “⁸Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘What will be the sign that Adonai will heal me, and that I should go up to the House of Adonai on the third day?‘ ⁹ Then Isaiah said, ‘This will be the sign to you from Adonai, that Adonai will do this word He has spoken: should the shadow go forward ten steps or go back ten steps?’ ¹⁰ Hezekiah answered, ‘It’s easy for a shadow to go forward ten steps; no, let the shadow turn back ten steps.‘ ¹¹ Then Isaiah the prophet cried to Adonai; and He brought the shadow ten steps backward, by which it had gone down on the sundial of Ahaz.”

Wow! Almighty God, through the prophet, actually let Hezekiah choose – should He, the Creator of the cosmos and orchestrator of time, move the sun’s shadow forward by 10 degrees, or backward by 10 degrees on the sundial?  I’m not sure why Hezekiah thought the first option was ‘easy’, but after he had made his choice, the Almighty obliged him.  (Ten ‘steps’ or degrees on the sundial equates to 40 minutes lost or gained. For more on God’s orchestration of time, see “Did NASA really prove the Bible accounts of Joshua and Hezekiah that a day is missing?” )

At this point in his account Isaiah shares, from verses 9-20, “A writing of King Hezekiah of Judah, after his illness, when he recovered…” I’ll just share the snippets of that monologue to which I could relate, to the end of verse 19. Here goes. Is. 38:10-19. ¹⁰ I said: “In the prime of my life, I am to enter the gates of Sheol. I am deprived of the rest of my years.” ¹¹ I said:  “… I will look on humanity no longer among the inhabitants of the world… ¹³ I stilled my soul till morning …  ¹⁴… I whisper, I moan … My eyes are weary, looking upward. Adonai … be my security!” ¹⁵ What should I say? For He has spoken to me— He Himself has done it! … ¹⁶ “Adonai … let me live!  … ¹⁸ For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You. Those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. ¹⁹ The living … —they praise You— as I do today. A father (or mother) makes Your faithfulness known to his (or her) children.”

With all of that recorded for us in Scripture, I compared and contrasted my experience of the past four years with Hezekiah’s experience of serious illness, healing and extension of life.  First I’ll address the differences. (1) Hezekiah was a man and a God-appointed ruler; I’m neither.  (2) Hezekiah had a proven prophet of God announce to him that he should prepare to die, whereas I didn’t – I only had modern medicine suggest that to me. (3) Hezekiah’s response was to weep bitterly and say to God, “Remember how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in Your eyes.” I could not honestly commend myself to God that way, and neither did I weep bitterly. (4) God’s next word to Hezekiah, via Isaiah, promised not only healing but also 15 years added to his life. Firstly, I don’t have an Isaiah between me and God. I have the Holy Spirit, but from Him I didn’t hear a promise of any specific number of years being added to my life. (5) Hezekiah’s confirmation of his healing apparently took only three days, whereas mine took about three years.

Now let’s look at the similarities that led me to entitle this piece “My Hezekiah Blessing.” From late January to late April 2021 (three months) I was tortured by continual abdominal pain and gastrointestinal problems that defied diagnosis even by specialists and their tests. It was Covid pandemic time, and I was stuck in Jamaica because flights back to Canada had all been cancelled. My pain, inability to digest solids, and the fruitless consultation of doctor after doctor suggested to me that I should prepare to die. And I did prepare, by examining myself to see which of the LORD’s instructions I would be leaving uncompleted. I concluded it was His Great Commission. Despite my endeavours with Child Evangelism, I had adult relatives with whom I had never shared the Gospel. So, to the best of my ability, I wrote and sent a letter to those relatives, explaining God’s sovereignty over the universe, satan’s pursuit of his own adversarial goals, and Yeshua’s great sacrifice to rescue us from the fate of joining satan in hell. Then I shared how they should respond in order to be saved and inherit the wonderful promises of God.  Finally, in April, I had an exploratory surgery right there in Jamaica, where a hidden tumor which would indeed have killed me, was found and removed from my small intestine.  After the surgery my blood pressure plummeted and that also would have killed me had not the anesthesiologist worked hard to prevent it. Then, pathology showed the tumor to be cancerous, and some spread of the cancer was also indicated.

All of that seemed to confirm that I should number my days, and I began to ‘reason’ with the LORD. I knew the ‘healing promises’ of the Bible, but I also knew that not everyone who quotes them back to God gets healed. So while other intercessors were quoting them to me, and for me in prayer, I was asking the LORD, “Are You going to heal me and extend my life as You did for Hezekiah and others?” No definite answer came, so I began to petition Him for one thing: “Please let me live long enough to see You heal and restore my son.” (At that point, my eldest son had been suffering from a degenerative neurological disease for about three years, which would kill him if God did not intervene.) 

In a paragraph above, I said that I didn’t weep bitterly like Hezekiah, but I did shed many desperate tears in ‘reasoning with God’ over my son’s healing, and asking that I would live long enough to witness it. To me, his timely healing was more important than the ultimate length of my life. It was in this petition that I kept asking others to support me, although I saw from some of their responses that either they didn’t quite get it, or they were led to pray differently.

There is one important similarity between Hezekiah’s experience and mine that I haven’t mentioned so far. That is, neither of us was going to be healed by the ‘finger of God’ alone. Apart from the instruction to go up to the temple in three days, Hezekiah was also told to use some physical medication. Is. 38:21 tells us of the prescription and prognosis: “Now Isaiah had said, ‘Let them take a cake of figs, and apply it to the boil, and he will live.’”  And 2 Kings 20:7 adds the important detail of the outcome: “Then Isaiah said, ‘Take a cake of figs.’ So they took one and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.”

In my case, when I returned to Canada the LORD emboldened me to accept an experimental treatment offered there, in a clinical trial.  After Mike and I prayerfully considered the offer and weighed its potential advantage over the proven outcomes of the “standard of care” for my condition, the Holy Spirit gave us both the faith to overcome the common fear of experimental treatments and clinical trials.  So, while our prayers for divine healing continued, supported by those of our faithful intercessors, we did not reject the use of physical medicine, as some believers do in their pursuit of divine healing. Thanks be to God, I did “go up to the temple” (that is, I did seek the LORD) as Hezekiah did. Yet, in contrast to Hezekiah’s three days, it took me three years to become confident that God would indeed be extending my life. However, I didn’t sit idly waiting. I took advantage of every opportunity to share from my life experience of the goodness of God, and even opportunities to preach on what God had taught me.

In 2023 I started posting a vlog (video blog) to YouTube, called Evangeline’s Voice, and shortly afterwards I added a musical playlist called The LORD’s Song / Quiet Time Noises. None of that required any medium-term or long-term frame of reference though. They were simply outlets for what God had deposited in me, which I wanted to share with others while I still had time. Then, in the summer of 2024 the LORD dropped an idea into my heart through a divine encounter with information on ACT Intl (Artists in Christian Testimony International).  Then He emboldened me again, this time with the conviction that He was indeed going to grant me the extension of life required to (a) follow His lead into a new ministry under ACT Intl., and (b) see my son healed.

As I listened to the LORD closely, He crystallized the vision of what He wanted me to do with my extension, and He gave me a name for the new ministry, JOY of the LORD!  Now about to be launched, JOY of the LORD will encourage others “all the more as (we) see the Day (of the LORD) approaching” (Hebrews 10:25) – encouraging them with God’s promises and gifting to His people, of overcoming joy, even with the severe testing of our faith that we may face in these days of the 21st Century. Through podcasts and in-person events, JOY of the LORD will use the Scriptures and divinely inspired songs, dance and other arts, to bring people into a current experience and infectious expression of God’s joy. Finally, after three years I was saying what Isaiah 38:20 records Hezekiah as saying, “Adonai will save me. So we will play my songs … all the days of our life in the House of Adonai.” Selah.