Our Eyes Are on You

One of my favorite moments in the Bible is the captivating moment in 2 Chronicles 20, when King Jehoshaphat and all the people of Judah find themselves in an urgent, critical, and desperate situation that rivals even the best of Hollywood’s dramatic conflicts. They’ve just received word that not one, not two, but three armies (the Moabites, Ammonites, and Meunites) have joined together to wage war against them, and they have exactly one day to prepare for the battle before the enemies reach them. You can feel the tension mounting by the third verse…

“Alarmed, Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah.” (First of all, that’s a serious fast. I’ve heard of pastors calling their churches to a fast; I’ve never heard of a king or president in our day calling the whole nation to fast and pray!)

Verse 4 tells us that the people “came together to seek help from the Lord” from every town in Judah. The verses that follow recount Jehoshaphat’s bold, honest, and courageous plea to the Lord.

And then comes the moment I love. King Jehoshaphat ends his prayer with these words…

v.12: “…For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You.“

That’s it. One of my favorite quotes in Scripture. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You.

I have found myself praying those words time and time again. In desperate situations, in painful, heart-wrenching moments, in impossible financial circumstances, in difficult relational struggles… Helpless and at a total loss for how to solve this thing, my heart cries out… Lord, I do not know what to do, but my eyes are on You.

If I can just keep my eyes fixed on Him, the impossible is going to give way to the possible. The difficult will yield to the doable. The desperation will succumb to confidence.

Maybe one reason I love this moment in Scripture is that I can relate to it so well; it has become one of the default cries of my heart in difficult circumstances. But another reason I love it so much is that I know what comes next. What follows is another one of my very favorite moments in Scripture…

v.13 “All the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood there before the Lord.” (We see them standing, waiting, not knowing what to do, but their eyes are on the Lord). Then someone receives a word from the Lord…

vs.15-17 “…This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s… You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you, Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.'”

Now, to be honest, my initial reaction is, “That’s easy for you to say! Don’t be afraid or discouraged? God, do You know what I’m up against here? Do You see how insurmountable this thing is?” Fortunately, that’s not how Jehoshaphat responded to the word of the Lord. Instead, the king and all the people of Judah fell down in worship before the Lord.

Note the instruction given them: “Take up your positions.” These words were breathed right after the statement, “You will not have to fight this battle.” Hmm… If they don’t have to fight, then what positions are they to take up? We see the answer first in their immediate response: They fall down in worship before the Lord. We see it again in their response the next day…

v. 21 “…Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise Him for the splendor of His holiness as they went out at the head of the army…”

They took up their positions in worship and in praise.

See how their response to crisis progressively develops throughout the story:

• First, in that desperate, paralyzing moment, they resolve solely to fix their eyes on God. Sometimes, we don’t know what to pray; we don’t know what to say; we don’t know what to do. All we can do is fix our eyes on God and trust Him to give us the next steps.
• Second, they receive the word of the Lord. Their position of fixing their eyes on Him postured them to hear and embrace His word when it was spoken.
• Third, they respond to the word of the Lord in worship.

Now, that favorite moment I was talking about… To me, this is one of the coolest, most exciting action scenes ever…

The stage is set. You’ve got the three combined armies charging across the countryside toward Judah’s army. You’ve got the people of Judah who are completely powerless in the natural to defend themselves, but in response to God’s word, they begin marching anyway in the direction of the oncoming armies. And let’s not forget verse 21, which I didn’t mean to breeze past earlier… You’ve got this king who just appointed a bunch of musicians to lead the whole army in praising God. He didn’t call for his most experienced fighters or his most accurate snipers to head out to the frontline… He put the musicians out front (not gonna lie, makes me a little bit glad that I wasn’t living in Judah at the time). Yikes. You can hear the musical score of the movie building, the tension mounting, the climactic moment approaching… The greedy, power-mongering enemy armies charge cockily ahead; they think they’ve got this. They know the army they’re about to attack is the smaller, weaker army of Judah, and they’ve got this in the bag. But there’s just one thing they didn’t count on…

vs. 22-24 “As they [the people of Judah] began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seri who were invading Judah, and they were defeated. The Ammonites and Moabites rose up against the men from Mount Seir to destroy and annihilate them. After they finished slaughtering the men from Seir, they helped to destroy one another. When the men of Judah came to the place that overlooks the desert and looked toward the vast army, they saw only dead bodies lying on the ground; no one had escaped.”

Wow. All this happened while Judah was marching up the hill, singing praises to God as they went.

By the time Judah reached the battle scene, the enemy had self-destructed. Judah didn’t even have to engage in combat, just as the Lord had promised. The Lord Himself set ambushes against the enemy, and He had it all taken care of before the people of Judah even arrived on the scene.

How cool is God?!

That’s not the only time in the Bible that we see the Lord fight on behalf of His people while they praise…

One more of my “favorites” is found in Isaiah 30:29-32, when we see the promise that the Lord, in a blazing display of awe and splendor, will strike down the enemy, and “Every stroke the Lord lays on them with his punishing club will be to the music of timbrels and harps, as He fights them in battle with the blows of His arm.”

I’ve got to say, if God is fighting for you, then whatever this is that you’re facing is going to end in one awesome display of His power!

Your responsibility isn’t to figure out how it will happen. Your responsibility is to…

• Fix your eyes on Him.
• Take up your position.
• Praise Him and worship Him right on through the trial.

There is more power in your praise than in your plans.
There is more breakthrough in your worship than in your workings.

If you can position yourself and praise in spite of your circumstances, then by the time you reach the moment of battle, you may very well find that the Lord has already been there ahead of you and took care of the whole entire situation for you.

Lord, we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on You.