I Thought

“Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.” But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.” (2 Kings 5:10-11)

Humility, the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc is one of the traits my husband and I find ourselves trying to instill within one of our four children a lot lately. Kids, and even some adults, find it so easy to disregard what simple obedience requires in fear that it will ruin their image/reputation. When our children take it upon themselves to deliberately disobey what we have said, it is a sign that they have weighed out the request against the outcome of obedience and felt that it was not worth the humility that it would come with. When this happens, we as parents have to demonstrate tough love in order for our children to learn this very valuable life lesson. As children of God, we too must be sure to show forth humility when receiving instructions from God, no matter how ridiculous they may seem. Naaman, made the mistake of being enraged when given a set of orders from the prophet due to having an inflated opinion of himself. He felt the prophet’s instructions were too simple, he lacked faith that what he said would actually work for him. His servants had to talk him into following Elisha’s instructions where he was made clean.

In the opening of John 9, we witness the exact opposite where a man blind from birth received sight from Jesus spitting on him, (6“he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes”). His ability to be “down for whatever” in order to receive healing made him a recipient of one of Jesus’ many miracles.

Today, we must learn from these two distinct examples of how we must be open to God doing a new thing to bring our dreams to pass. Doing this requires that we stop trying to make sense of how He does what He does. He is completely trustworthy, just reflect on pass victories where you let go and let God. May Naaman’s response, “I thought…”, never be our response when given instructions from God.