Natural Disaster, Judgment and Hezekiah

By Fred Pruitt

Someone wrote and asked me if the earthquake in Haiti was a judgment like Sodom and Gomorrah, and some questions about why Hezekiah did certain things and the Lord’s reaction to them.

Haiti

There is probably a little bit of everything going on in Haiti, from “judgment” to miracles. I don’t think that it is anything we have to decide. I have seen some on the Internet declaring this God’s judgment and there are always those folks for every tragedy or natural disaster. People seem to want to see bad stuff fall on “other people.” And then blame it on “their sins.”

Our task in Christ is to look a little closer to home — to ourselves — and not toward judgment of others. It is not a good thing to get into having to “decide” and then declare to others what you think God is doing somewhere in some people. It is a very heavy burden to bear, (one had best be very certain since one is speaking “for” God), to declare judgment on individuals or whole groups of people. Whether our neighbor next door or a whole country undergoing acute hardship. Our lives are in the mercy, compassion and grace of God, toward ourselves and because we can see it for and in ourselves, we know God is like that toward others.

If something happening is “judgment,” then those who should know it will know it, and if there are those who must make it known to them, they will know also. The Spirit will see to that. But for most of us our job is to give out love everywhere to everyone, toward everyone, and enter into judgment with no one. Let God decide that. He has reserved that for Himself. Therefore when something of such deep suffering and tragedy confronts us, we are free for our heart’s desire to be able to roll up our sleeves and wonder where and how can we help, rather than have to sit down and assign blame and administer judgment.

Hezekiah

I don’t know the answers to all that about Hezekiah, why God healed him, etc. The Bible is wonderful in that we don’t have to figure out everything, or know all the real “deep meanings”, etc. If I don’t understand a passage, or have no peace about how I understand it, I don’t sweat it. I walk in the Spirit, which means that each moment everything I need in the moment is provided. When I need understanding of a particular passage of scripture, it will there.

I used to heartily “seek” these things. It came naturally, in that I was pressed to seek. That is good for a time.

But there also comes a time when we enter into rest, because the “rest” is God Himself, and then in that rest we live out of, or our lives are coming out from, God, rather than something separate, like hearing what God “expects of us,” and then we (as if we are separate) going out and trying to apply or do it.

This is entirely different from that. We have discovered the invisible but always flowing spring of the Spirit within us, so that whatever we need is provided when we need it. Need understanding for something? — there it comes! Need this or that? — there it comes!! Now that doesn’t mean there might not be a little turmoil or a little sweat involved, but by whatever human process that might ensue, it is all out of the life of the Spirit which is out of a life of rest in God. That’s what Jesus was describing when He said His life “came down from heaven.” It is a given life, flowing in grace, effortlessly, every moment of every day. In all things.

Enjoy seaching the scriptures, for they are a rich treasure that can never be exhausted in the Spirit, and above all, live in the grace which is He Himself as the life which “came down from heaven” now living in the world as you.

Much love,
fred