21 Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods. 22 For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.” 23 So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.
I am deeply humbled by Ezra and his companions here. It was the desire of his heart to display the glory of God to the Persian king. They wanted the king to know that God was powerful enough and loving enough to protect His people. And in so doing they rejected the path of least resistance and decided to do the “risky” thing and trust God.
In applying this I want to be careful not to make this more prescriptive than it actually is. There are many places in Scripture that are simply descriptive (they describe things as they were, for a specific situation at a specific time). If we are not careful we can try to make descriptive things as if they are prescriptive (every person in every place at every time should do them). So, I want to avoid this.
Having said that I believe there is much we can learn from Ezra here. I fear that if I were in this particular situation I would have taken the path of least resistance and asked for the kings help. The solution would seem so obvious:
We need protection + The king is offering protection = We use the king’s offered protection.
Then I could even make it sound spiritual by saying God uses means to accomplish his purposes and He provided the kings protection against the enemies. And that would actually be true, because you can find a host of other places in Scripture where God does protect the people of God by using means such as the protection of a foreign king.
At the end of the day I am not certain that there is a formula for when you should take the kings help and when you should take the Ezra route and reject the kings help depending on God to provide apart from these means. But what I do see from Ezra is that his chief aim was that God be glorified. I also see that he pursued humility and absolute dependence before the Lord. For Ezra the solution looked like this:
We want to display God’s glory + We already told the king God would do this + we do not want the king to take credit for God’s work = therefore we will refuse his help, humble ourselves and fast before the Lord, trusting in Him to provide safety.
So, while there may not be a formula I am confident that when we are growing in our desire to display God’s glory above our own, and when we are growing in humble dependence upon the LORD, he will answer our questions Himself and not necessarily a formula.
