In times of great distress we may be easily tempted to think that God deceives us. Hezekiah read this temptation in the letter of Sennacherib, but he responded to it as we must always respond to every temptation: he took to prayer.

In his prayer, Hezekiah realized and acknowledged something which is a pillar of our faith: God is not a mere "god". The "gods" destroyed by Sennacherib were merely the work of human hands, and therefore they could be destroyed. Sennacherib made the mistake of putting God on the same level as these man-made idols.

All false ideas about God come, not from divine revelation and faith, but from the limitations of human thought and the many fears that easily darken the human heart. While we may not be as foolish as Sennacherib, we can, nevertheless, easily have many false ideas about God, ideas which often plague our minds and hearts, destroying our peace of soul. These false ideas must be destroyed so that we can surrender fully to the providence of God, letting God truly be God in our lives.