Ortlund: Have you come to realize how the God-centeredness of God is good news for you?

King Hezekiah prayed for God's salvation of Judah in Isaiah 37 v 20.

20 Now, O LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God.”

Hezekiah finally sees what Isaiah has been saying all along. It is not this world with whom we have to deal, primarily; it is always God. The nations and powers and ideas and fashions of human making are not ultimate and definitional of us; God is. It is not human power that we need; what we need is God. He has allied himself with us not to serve our will but to defend his own glory as we serve his will.

Have you come to realize how the God-centeredness of God is good news for you? For one thing, it means that your unworthiness is irrelevant to God’s readiness to save you. He is not responding to what you deserve; he is proving what a good Savior he is. Don’t you see? This opens up a new definition of happiness. Happiness is God being God to you. Stop praying, “Lord, I want you to make my life better.” Stop praying, “Lord, I want you to make my husband or my wife better. I want my children to behave. I want an ideal job.” When you pray that way, you can only end up frustrated, because God will not subordinate himself to any human agenda. Start praying, “Lord, I just want you to be God to me. I want my life, with my problems, to show the world that you save sinners.”

Learn what it means to say with Paul, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). That is Christianity. If you’ll trust God’s goodness enough to pray for his triumph, he’ll give you everything you long for in your own deepest intentions.

Ortlund, R. C., Jr., & Hughes, R. K. (2005). Isaiah: God saves sinners (p. 217). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

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