My name is Carter Conlan from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. Hezekiah said, Well, time always goes forward quite easily, but it never goes backwards.
Let the shadow go backwards ten degrees, which is roughly twenty minutes. A prayer that's not even filled with faith. If God turns time backwards to show this King, I answer feeble prayers too.
Thank you for joining us for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlan. This week's message is titled, Mercy and My Feeble Prayer, taken from 2 Kings 20. Is it possible to turn back time?
If so, it would mean the solar system would have to be turned backward because the entire universe is moving in the same direction. Today, Carter will explain how one small feeble prayer moved back time twenty minutes. Join Carter right now to find out more about this amazing miracle. Romans chapter 8 and verse 32, I've entitled this message, Mercy and My Feeble Prayers. Mercy and My Feeble Prayers. Paul says these words, He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? A phenomenal verse of scripture. It's preceded actually by verse 31 where Paul says, If God is for us, who can be against us? That was the verse that I learned as a young believer in Christ that set me free from nine years of panic attacks, nine years of hell on earth, nine years of being under the thumb of darkness, nine years of suffering because of things that were said and done in my life in the early formative years. But I read a verse of scripture.
In this verse of scripture, only the second half of verse 31, If God is for us, who can be against us? I remember getting up at night, one of these panic attacks coming on my life and going down into the living room. And prior to this, to handle these attacks in my life, I would exercise to the point of exhaustion.
I would drink straight whiskey and I would take Valium, tranquilizers, and sometimes I would combine all three. But now as a believer in Christ, I determine in my heart I'm not living this way anymore. I'm not living under the thumb of darkness. If the truth has set me free and I'm free indeed, then freedom is my portion and freedom is my future. And somehow in my heart, I started to believe that God wanted to set me free. It wasn't just something that I wanted, it was something that God wanted.
The scripture says, God so loved this world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. And Jesus Christ Himself said, I came to give you life, not just eternal life, but abundant life on this earth. I came to give you a full life. I came to give you a reason to live.
I came to do something in you so profound that others will stand up and take notice of the fact that I am God. And I've chosen to do it because I love you. I'm not doing it because you deserve it. I'm not doing it because you've earned it. I'm not doing it because you've found seven steps to something in your life to live a better life. I'm going to do it because I love you.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Somehow that got into my heart and I went down into my living room and I still remember as if it was yesterday what I said. I said, Satan, you can only kill me if God allows you to because when you have a panic attack, you do run the risk of a stroke or a heart attack or something like that.
And I said, you can only kill me if God allows you to and if He does, I'm going home to heaven tonight. So either way I win. I'm winning this fight tonight.
I can't lose this fight. If I lose my life right now, I gain. To be absent from the body, Paul said, is to be present with the Lord. So I'm okay with that. If God allows me to be taken out tonight, I'm only being taken out into a better place anyway.
So I really don't care. However, I'm not living under this anymore. And I said these words, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I resist you.
I remember the exact words I said and I've told this a hundred or hundreds of times. At the very moment those words left my lips, a heat hit me in my feet. Not just a fuzzy warmth, an actual heat, as if you put a hair dryer on each foot. My feet got hot.
It went through my legs, through the torso, through my chest and out the top of my head. And in two minutes or less of time, I was set free that night from nine years of hell. Nine years of not being able to go into a crowded room.
Nine years of being afraid in classes to be singled out by a professor, lest I should have a panic attack. Nine years of wondering, is this what my life is going to be like? If God is for us, who can be against us? That was the half a verse that I believed. God's for me. And so if God's for me, there's no power of hell that has the right to my life anymore.
Do you understand this online? God is for you. And because God is for you, there's no power of darkness that has the right to oppress you any longer. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? In other words, God didn't withhold his son from you. He allowed his son to go to a cross.
He allowed his son to be literally beaten to death, to stand and pay the price for the wrong things that you have done, so that you and I can come back to God, knowing that we're reconnected to the living God, we're reconnected to the life that God has for us to live on this earth, and we are reconnected to an eternity with God after we leave this physical body and this physical earth. But if God didn't spare his son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? You know, Jesus didn't come for you because you have it all together, but actually because you don't. Luke chapter 5 verse 31, Jesus said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
I just love that. God says, I didn't come for those who feel like you've got it all together. And if you think you can transform your own life by human effort, then go ahead. Give it your best shot.
Give it your best shot. And when you finally come to the end, I'll still be there waiting for you. I didn't come for those who do have a plan to get free in their own strength. I came to those who have no plan. We heard that in the message about Gideon. We come to you when you're in the weakest state you've ever been in, perhaps in your entire life, and we call you mighty men and women of resource.
How is that even possible? God says, no, I'm going to send you. I'm going to equip you. I'm going to give you what you need. I'm going to take you where I want you to go. I'm going to make you into what I destined you to be. I'm going to give you everything you need once you get there. My name is going to be glorified through you, not by human effort, not by human wisdom, but by the indwelling of the Spirit of Almighty God.
It's going to be by my presence in your life that you're going to be transformed. Now, when we talk about repentance, he's not talking about wanting to be free just from the consequence of certain behaviors, but also of trying to be free in your own strength. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? In other words, when we get to the point where we just can't go forward, God says, well, let me do it for you. When I rose from the dead, the Scripture tells us that Jesus took our captivity captive and gave gifts to us.
He took our captivity captive and gave us abilities that can only come from God. To be people that we couldn't be without God. Clean. Declared as clean as God is through Jesus Christ. We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Given the promise of new, abundant, and eternal life. Given a reason to live on the earth. Given the ability to understand that if God be for me, who can be against me?
I have a promise of God that my life is going to be something it could never be in any amount of strength that I could ever muster in myself. A lot of people look at their own lives. You're looking at your own life and you determine that you're not worthy of mercy.
And that's a common affliction. You know, the danger that you face is that you are becoming God in this area of your life. You're determining that if I were God, I would not grant mercy to myself. In Ezekiel chapter 22, the nation was in a total mess. The nation of Israel, who were supposed to be the people of God bringing glory to his name on the earth at that time. The priests are violating the law and profaning holy things. The princes are receiving bribes and tearing pray. The prophets are seeing false visions and divining lies. And they're saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when God had not spoken.
The people of the nation are using oppression, committing robbery, mistreating the poor, and wrongfully oppressing the stranger. And so we look at this situation and we say, God, surely this nation is deserving of judgment. And you know, you can look in the mirror sometimes and you look back on what you've been doing for the last month or two or year or whatever the situation is, and you say, Surely God, I'm deserving of your judgment for the things I've been doing, the things I've been speaking, the way I've been living. I'm supposed to be kind and I'm so selfish. I'm supposed to be generous and I'm so greedy. I'm supposed to be pure and I'm so lustful. And all of these other things, I'm supposed to be so truthful and I have this tendency to bend truth so that maybe people will like me a little bit more.
I don't know what the situation that you're facing is. And you look in the mirror and say, God, surely I'm not deserving of mercy. And so this is the conclusion that the religious people of this time actually arrived at. But that's not what God was thinking. God was actually looking for an opportunity to show mercy, even to a nation in as miserable a condition as God's people were at this time. And he goes on to verse 30 of Ezekiel 22, he says, So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land that I should not destroy it, but I found no one. In other words, there was nobody there who could agree that God could show mercy.
I think everybody looked around and they just saw the general debauchery of the nation and said, well, if I were God, I would judge the nation. But that's not what God was thinking. And so we get that way with ourselves. We feel like we're not deserving of mercy.
God, you gave me a chance. These people could say, you gave us a chance and we blew it. You called us out of captivity and you said we were to be a people through whom the world was supposed to be blessed. And look what we've become.
We're oppressive and we're robbing and we're taking bribes and we're lying in your name and we're doing all this stuff. We are not worthy of your mercy. Now that's what the people of the land were thinking, but that's not what God was thinking. He was looking to show mercy. So don't ever fall for the lie that you're not worthy of mercy.
Don't ever fall because it's not about you and it's not about being deserving. You can't deserve mercy. Mercy is only mercy when all you have left is mercy.
Do you understand? Before it gets to that point, it's something you earn. It's something you work for. It's not really mercy.
It's like a payment for the goodness in my life. No, mercy is when I'm done. Mercy is when I'm caught by a traffic cop going 50 miles an hour over the speed limit and only mercy will save me at this point. Only mercy will cause this ticket not to be written. Do you understand? I'm done.
There's nothing I can add to this formula. Mercy. So God maybe is seeking for a man again who would allow him to be merciful. That's really the point he's given me. Maybe you're listening to this online and you bought the lie that you're not worthy of mercy.
But that's not true because it's not about you. You did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. He said, I came to call people back to me who know they have failed.
They know there's no way back and they have no resource to get back in their own strength. I want to show you mercy. But then you go on to say, well, my prayers are so feeble. Like if I get the right formula or if I prayed long enough or didn't he say, have faith in God, whoever says to this mountain, be moved and cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe you shall have what he says. Well, I can never get beyond the doubt in my heart. I don't know about you but we all fight that, don't we?
There's always a line of doubt. We want to believe fully but I don't know, it's just a frailty of the human nature that we get to a certain point, we draw back and we say, oh God, I'm not free because my prayers are... First of all, you say I'm not worthy of mercy, which is not true. And secondly, my prayers are too feeble, which is not true as well.
Let me show you an example of the heart of God. In 2 Kings, I'm going to finish with this chapter 20. There's a king called Hezekiah and he gets a word from God actually that he's going to die and he's not going to live. Set your house in order, you're going to die. It's all over, you're finished, your time is up. It's just a matter of days, you got left. The scripture says he went to bed that night and turned his face to the wall and he prayed and said, God, please let me live.
I'm just paraphrasing it, but essentially that's what he said. Please let me live, God, I don't want to die. I've tried to walk with you, I've tried to be honest, I've tried to walk with a clean heart. I've tried to do what was good, God, please let me live. Have you ever prayed a prayer like that? Have you ever prayed a prayer, God, please have mercy on me, give me life. Don't let me die in this place, don't let me die with this bondage in my life or whatever it is that's going on right now, God.
I really do want to live. Now, the Lord sent a word to him from the prophet Isaiah, he sent him back. And the Lord said, I've heard your prayer, I've seen your tears, I'll heal you. And the third day you're going to go up to the house of the Lord and I'll give you 15 more years to live. And not only that, he says, I'll deliver the city from the hand of the king of Assyria and I will defend the city for my own sake and the sake of my servant David. So not only will I answer your prayer, I'll give you 15 more years and I'll defend the city and I'll overthrow the king of Assyria. And all he asked for is, God, I want to live.
You know, the scripture says he will do exceedingly abundantly, even more than we ask or think. He wasn't asking for the city to be defended. He wasn't asking for all these other things. He was just wanting to live. You know, when you pray that, you pray, say, God, I want to live.
I want to live, oh God. He'll do more for you than you think or ask. He'll take you farther than your prayer. Take you farther than you thought your prayer is going to take you.
But then it gets very interesting. And then Hezekiah said, what is the sign that the Lord will heal me and that I'll go up to the house of the Lord on the third day? Now, when I read this, I would say, God, you could easily be offended by this. I mean, you've already given this guy a word. All he's asking you is for life. You've given him 15 years. You've given him the victory over his enemies.
You've given him much more than he even asked for. And then he comes back with unbelief freely. This is a prayer of unbelief. Well, God, I want to believe you, but how can you give me a sign that I can believe you? Give me a sign that I will be healed and that in three days I'll be offering a sacrifice in the house of the Lord. If I was God, I would have said to this guy, you'll be there in three days. That's good enough for you.
I don't know about you, but I don't know if I would answer this. But you see, I'm not God. Thank God I'm not God. Thank God. I wouldn't be in this pulpit if I was God.
Neither would you. Hallelujah. And then Isaiah said, this is the sign that the Lord will do. Do you want the time to go forward or time to go backwards?
Think this one through. Do you want time to go forward or do you want time to go backwards? And Hezekiah said, well, time always goes forward quite easily, but it never goes backwards. He says, so let the shadow go backwards 10 degrees, which is roughly 20 minutes. And so God brought the shadow 10 degrees backwards by which it had gone down in the sun to Alavehaz. A prayer is not even filled with faith.
And He turns time backwards to show this king. I answer feeble prayers too. Not just ones that are filled with faith. They want to be filled with faith. I want to believe, but oh God, help my unbelief. Like the father that said, I want to believe my child is demon possessed. I want to believe. Help my unbelief.
He wasn't offended by that prayer either. Do you understand? I'm not going to go into the whole thing. Do you understand to turn time backwards 20 minutes, he had to actually stop the rotation of the earth and turn it backwards? That means he had to suspend the laws of gravity or everything on the earth would have been flung into space.
He had to suspend the waters and cause them to stay in place so they would have overflowed the continents. And when you study this thing, when you look at some astronomers and physicists have talked about this passage, they said you can't just stop the earth and turn it backwards because everything in the solar system works like a clock, like a watch. If I pulled the, this is an old fashioned watch by the way, it's not a digital one, but if I pulled this knob out and I turned time backwards 20 minutes, everything inside reverses.
It's not just the dials on the face. Everything turns backwards. So that means the whole of the solar system has got to turn backwards. Then one commentator says, well, you can't turn the solar system backwards because the whole universe is moving together in one direction.
So you've got to back the whole universe up 20 minutes. Come on now. Come on now.
Come on now. He does all that to show one man I'm going to heal you and I'm going to deliver you from your enemies, but it's not just for him. It's going to be written down in the text and scripture for us to read and for other people to read. God says, this is my heart for you. This is my heart to show you mercy when you don't believe you deserve mercy. This is my heart is to turn backwards things that you thought could never be recovered. Time that you thought you had lost forever. Relationships you thought that could never be restored.
Things in your life that you thought had passed and could never return. God says, I can turn the universe backwards if I want to. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God.
I'm telling you guys and girls, if that doesn't make you shout, nothing ever will. The power of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God, the glory of God. To answer feeble prayers. That was a feeble prayer. Do you understand? That was a prayer that was steeped in unbelief, but it was a prayer.
It was a man who was saying, God, I want to believe you. Would you give me a sign? What would you have me do? Turn everything backwards 20 minutes. Can you imagine that? Imagine people all over the world saying, hey, I thought it was 3.20. It's 3 o'clock now. Well, they only had sundials.
They didn't have watches. But that would be what it would be like in our time. You know, God can turn the clock back.
Things that you thought you lost. Is there any limit to the power of God? Is there any limit to what God can do? Do we choose to limit Him? Is that another one of our mistakes? Do we believe there's a limit to His mercy?
No, there's no limit to His mercy. You see, every once in a while somebody discovers this, that it's not about me and it's not about that. It's great to have faith. Thank God for faith. But realistically, none of us have the kind of faith we need. There's a flaw in all of it. I don't care how much you study the Bible and how eloquent you pray. There's a flaw in your faith.
There's a limit somewhere you're going to get to where it's hard to believe. This man was just honest about it. He said, God, give me a sign.
Give me a sign. Oh, hallelujah. You know, I love that when the disciples were in the boat and Jesus stood up and He calmed the wind and He calmed the waves.
I think it was instant. They said, what kind of a man is this? Even the wind and the seas obey Him. I'll tell you what kind of a man he is. He's the one that turned time back for Hezekiah. He's the one who can call people out of the grave and give them a new testimony. He's the one that can change your situation. The one who can heal your body. The one who can open your prison doors and the one who can bring healing into your wounded heart. The one who can restore your family.
The one who can bring back what you thought was lost. This is who He is. Even though you don't believe that you're worthy of mercy and your prayers are feeble, it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. Talk to Him. Call out to Him. Let's start by just acknowledging that He died for you. Over 2,000 years ago on a cross, He took your place to pay the price for your sin. He didn't die just for some vain display of affection. He died with a purpose. You couldn't get back to God. You couldn't bring yourself back to God through any amount of human effort. So God sent His Son to be beaten to death and rejected and put on a cross and hung a nail there to bleed to death for you so that you can be forgiven and brought back into relationship with the living God. That's mercy.
It's mercy. And not only did He set me free from fear, but exactly what He did to Hezekiah. He said, I'm going to take you farther than you've asked. I wasn't asking to travel the world and preach the gospel.
I wasn't asking to stand in front of crowds. I was just asking to be free from fear. And God says, no, I'm going to do more than that. I'm going to set you free tonight, but I'm going to put your feet on a path that's going to glorify My name, even if your prayers are feeble. Pray this simple prayer with me. Say, acknowledge in your heart that Jesus died to save you.
And invite Him to come into your life and forgive you. Don't make it complicated. Because He never intended it to be complicated. The thief on the cross just said, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And that was enough. It got him into paradise that day. Don't make it complicated. It could be as simple as just saying, Jesus, thank you for dying for me.
I want you to be my Savior and I want to live for you. Just make it real simple. And then just begin to talk to Him.
Ask Him. No, tell Him what you'd like for your future. God, I want to live. I don't want to die in this area of my life. I don't want my visions and dreams and hopes. I want to live and I want to bring glory to Your name.
And that's exactly what happened with Hezekiah. He lived and because of even his feeble prayer, glory was brought to the name of God through him. Lord Jesus Christ, I thank You for loving me. I thank You for giving Your life for me.
Paying the price for the wrong that I've done. For giving me mercy today. Even when I feel I don't deserve it. I see that You want to give me mercy. So I open my heart to it.
I just accept it. And I thank You for saving me. I ask You, Lord, take me where You want me to go.
Make me into what You want me to be. And give me what I need when I get there. I trust You, Lord, with my entire life. I trust You with my future.
And I thank You for it. In Jesus' name. You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
