Today’s reading: 2 Kings 5:1-14
The king of Syria sends his top military leader, Naaman, to Israel to be healed of leprosy. As Naaman heads out, what we see is that he had a plan in place for his trip–he traveled with servants, took a large amount of money for payment, had ten changes of clothing, and brought a letter of introduction from his commander and king. But in addition to his plan, Naaman also had some preconceived expectations about how his healing would take place, none of which came to fruition. Being a highly respected and powerful figure in Syria, Naaman expects to be treated with a bit of pomp and ceremony, but he receives none. He is made to go to Elisha’s house and when he arrives, Elisha doesn’t even grace Naaman with his presence. Instead, he simply sends out a message to go and wash in the Jordan River seven times. Ouch! Well, Naaman is furious and comes close to missing out on God’s healing when he decides to return to Syria. Thankfully he was sensible enough to listen to the wise words of his servants, and when he follows through on what Elisha instructs, God restores his skin to a state that was better than Naaman most likely imagined.
What lesson(s) did you learn from Naaman’s example? When you take requests to the Lord in prayer, do you have preconceived expectations of how He should answer? Do you have any examples of when God answered a particular prayer in a completely different manner than you expected? Tami
Source: Tami’s Blog