My way or the highway

As I meditated on 2 Kings 5 my spirit gave warning, or should I say, received warning, from the text. Too many times we do just as Naaman did, we risk missing the blessings of God because they did not come in the form or manner that we had expected, and therefore we do not believe it is God. Naaman came all the way from Syria to be healed in a miraculous way, but when Elisha told him to simply go and wash in the Jordan 7 times, he was angered. He tried to leave, but his servants convinced him to at least obey. As we see in the story, God was in the command of Elisha and Naaman was cleansed through washing in the Jordan. Once more, in the first century, the Jews missed the coming of the long awaited Messiah because He didn’t come in the manner that they had expected. They expected a warrior king to come and set them free, but instead they received a humble servant, come to die a cursed death on the cross for their sins. What scares me most is to think about what I would have done if I had lived in the first century. Would I have been like the Jews and missed the Christ because He was not what I expected or would I have been one of the few that did receive Him? This is a question to which I will never know the answer, but unfortunately the odds say that it is more likely that I would have responded as the Jews did, and rejected Him.

What can we do? How do we protect ourselves from missing God or His work because it is not in the form or manner in which we expect? My thoughts are this, instead of reading God’s word and trying to formulate what God’s plan is from it, in a sense trying to deductively construct His plan, let’s just wait on the Lord and as we see His plan unfold we can prayerfully weigh it against scripture, knowing that God will never contradict Himself or His revealed will. I think this is the answer because we do not have God’s wisdom and because God never tells us that He has revealed everything to us in His Word. This means that if we are trying to deductively construct what His plan is that we will have holes where He did not reveal. The Jews and their response to Christ gives evidence of this. They deductively constructed the coming of the Messiah from scripture, yet because they didn’t have God’s wisdom or all the information, they got it wrong, and therefore rejected the Messiah and murdered Him (all of this according to God’s will, of course). Instead, if they had waited on the Lord and taken the claims of Christ to the Scriptures, weighed them against God’s revealed will, they would have seen Jesus as the Messiah. They would have received Him. We know this because Jesus is everywhere in the Old Testament, Romans, Galatians and Hebrews give great evidence to this. Instead of trying to figure it all out and have every detail planned, trying to say that we know and understand what God’s will and plan are, let’s just admit that we are finite and that God is infinite and that we can never fully know or understand His will. Let’s wait on the Lord and as His will and plan are revealed we can prayerfully weigh them against scripture, knowing that God will never contradict Himself and never go against His own revealed will. Then we can pray and expect that we will not miss God or His work or His blessings because they did not come in the form or manner that we expected. How about we put our pride and ourselves down, lay them at the feet of God and simply receive Him, as He is, not as we want Him to be, in His time, in His way.

(Note- When I speak of deductively constructing God’s will from His Word I am not talking about formulating theology. We should and we must systematically approach God’s Word in an effort to understand theology so that we can adequately relate the teachings of Scripture to our lives and so that we can adequately teach them to others. I am referring to making a literal timeline of events for God in determining what must happen, when it must happen and how it must happen in order for us to believe that it is God, which you can clearly see has problems attached to it)

When people are big and God is small

I was reading John 2 and at the end of that chapter I read a section of scripture, three verses long, entitled, ‘The discerner of hearts.’ These three verses tell of how many people believed in Christ during his first Passover in Jerusalem because of the great miracles that he did, but how Jesus put no weight in their belief/testimony of him because he knows what is in the heart of men. I couldn’t help but stop and think about how beneficial this example would be for all the pastors and ministers out their ‘serving’ God. As leaders we are very often put in the situation to choose between what is right, that which is commanded by God, and what is pleasing to others, namely, those we are leading. Unfortunately, all to often we make the wrong decision, myself included. And I also know that this is a sad day for a leader, when they look back at the decision just made and see that they have honored themselves above the Lord and his commands. Why did we do it? Because we sought the testimony of men, we wanted to be liked and spoken well of. In my circumstance this failing was in the place of church discipline. My elder board didn’t want to do anything; they didn’t think it was our business to interfere in someone else’s personal life. I took them to scripture to show them the evidence otherwise and the clear commands that we are to act, but they could not be convinced. In the end I did not answer the call of scripture and step out in faith and seek to rebuke this person and their actions. I went along with my elder board. The person in question went on to living in unrepentant sin and failure in the sight of God. Never again! Never again will I experience that sad day when I look back on my actions and see a focus on my own glory and not on God’s. It is not worth it. Let us all take after the example of Christ and put no weight on the testimony of men, because we know what is in their hearts, we have experienced it first hand because we ourselves have the same hearts they do. Let us seek strength through Christ in the Holy Spirit that our main focus in all of life would be to receive a great testimony from God, that in the end he would look on us and say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.” To God be the glory!