May 19, 2006

The Word May 19, 2006
God Does not Always Work The Way
We Think He Should.

Read: 2 King 5

-During the course of the week, we have learned about different types of believers. I have learned in my life that I can be any one of these believers at any given time based on the situation. There are some areas in my life were I trust and there are some areas where I have a hard time trusting God like I should. The goal is to walk on the good ground in every area in my life.
-How do we do this? One way I believe people allow the devil to take away their faith, is by not being obedient to God. An example of this is given in 2 Kings 5. Naaman, in verse 1, is described as, “a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper.” A little maid, who was brought away captive out of Israel, informed him that God had a prophet in Israel who could heal him. He must have believed her because he went to Israel in search of the prophet. What did he have to lose? He had leprosy. Some of the side effects of leprosy are clawed hands and paralysis of muscles of the face, eye, and neck. The key is that he heard and he went and with joy, am sure. Seeing how he now had hope that his leprosy could be healed.
-When we talked about the “suppose believer” in this situation, they would have heard they could be healed but they would have never got around to doing anything about it. The “credit” and “have faith in” believers would have acted just as Naaman did; heard and went with joy.
-Once at Elisha the prophet’s door, Elisha sent his servant to the door and his servant told him, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shall be clean.” This upset Naaman because he thought that Elisha would come out to him, call out to his Lord, lay hands on him, and then he would be healed. So, there is no doubt that he believed that he could be healed. The problem was that he came to the man of God with his own solution to the problem. Naaman even stated that the Jordan was not the cleanest river. He questioned why he could not wash in a cleaner river?
-How often do we believe in the solution that we want above the one God gives us? Just like Naaman walked away in his anger, this is where the “credit” and “have faith in” believers walk away. He walked away for two reasons the answer he got was not the one that he was expecting and because the task that he was given to do was unpleasant. Far to often, we believe we know what God would do in a situation. People are so quick to say, “God would never do that.” Many of us never take the time to learn who God really is. Upon studying his word, there are many times I was surprised to his reaction to things. When things didn’t go the way I thought God would handle it, then the disappointment comes in. In that disappointment, I lose my faith. Disappointment also comes when I don’t think I can handle the task
God has put in front of me. If He has told us to do it, He has given us what we need to accomplish it.
-So how would a “accept as true or real” believer handle this situation? The same way Naaman’s servant did. He told Naaman if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it, so why not this? In all of this, even if we do come to God with an expected outcome we need to be willing to let go of our ideas and receive God’s, even when it makes no sense. What kind of sense did it make to go and wash in a dirty river seven times? However, in his obedience he was healed. We need to learn to believe, trust, and obey God past what we see, how we think things should be, or at how difficult the task may appear.
“Lord, please help me to believe, be obedient to, and stand on your word.”