Stay Connected
You know, it’s a funny thing about pride,
when your heart is full of pride, you try
to write your own prescriptions. And you
start saying things like, “Well, if they
apologize.” Or “Well, if they come to me.”
Well, if they this and if they that.” But
what if God isn’t going to heal you on
your terms? What if He isn’t going to set
everything up to be convenient? What if
the command that God gives you is to do
something that to you seems
insignificant and foolish and
embarrassing and humiliating?
What if God gives you something to do
that seems beneath you? Namaan said,
” The Jordan River?” and he went away angry.
Here’s the two words that get
me in trouble. Verse 11: “I thought.” Do you
know how many times those two words have stood between me and peace? “I thought.” “I
thought.” Do you know how many times those two words have stood between me and joy? “I
thought.” How much longer are you gonna
worship at the altar of what you thought?
What if God wants to do it a different
way? What if God wants to do it in a
process not in a moment? Look Namaan
expected it to go a certain way, “I
thought that he would surely come out to me..” He would come to me. He’s supposed to
come to me. I’m a great man. People come to me. And I thought he would “stand and call on
the name of the Lord his God.” I thought he would wave.
He was supposed to “wave his hand over
the spot and cure me of my leprosy.” But
see, that wasn’t the spot that God was
aiming for. God wasn’t trying to heal
Namaan’s skin as much as he was trying to create faith in Namaan’s heart. That’s why I
went off, because I misunderstood what
God was trying to do in that moment. I
went off, because I got so much more
concerned about how I looked in the
situation than what God was trying to do
through it. And the message today is for
somebody who is about to go off. You’re
sick of it. I don’t have to put up with
this. Do they know who I am?
Namaan said, “Do you know my name, man?” Okay.
I’ll retire the jokes. I’ll just
stick to the Bible. “Are not Abana and
Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better
than all the waters of Israel?” I got my
prejudice. I got my preference. I got my
convenience. I got my thoughts. I got my
plan. I got my script. “Couldn’t I wash in
them and be cleansed?” So, watch what Namaan
did. He turned and went off. Literally, “He
went off in a rage.” And thank God when he
speaks to you in those moments and
interrupts you from going off and going
back home. Going home unhealed because you were unwilling to be humbled.
And Namaan’s servants came to him. Look what they did. They went to him and said
“My father, sir, dude, if the Prophet had told you to do
some great thing, would you not have done it?” Well, yes, because I am a great man. I’m great.
“Right then, how much more, then, when he tells you, “Wash and be cleansed!” Can I tell you
something? God’s not trying to cure your condition
or fix your situation. He’s trying to
make you hold on the inside. So, this is
how God showed me, Holly. He came for a cure, but he went home cleansed. And
sometimes what we come for is not what
we leave with. Watch what he did next.
Verse 14: “So Namaan went down…” that’s the only way he’s gonna get healed. He went
down “and dipped himself in the Jordan”
that muddy river that meant so much to
the nation Israel but meant
nothing to Namaan. And he “dipped himself
in the Jordan seven times.” And the first
time he dipped, let me assure you, nothing
got better. And the second time he dipped, let me assure you, his spot looked
exactly the same. And the third time he
dipped, his skin didn’t grow any lighter
or darker. And the fourth time he dipped,
nothing happened to indicate that he was
doing the right thing. And the fifth time
he dipped… do you get the point? Nothing
happened. The sixth time that he dipped,
he wondered, “Did this man sent me down
here to make a fool of me?” Because God
wants to know do you trust me enough to
stay in the process when you cannot see
the proof.
Sometimes I am going to need you to go
in before you go off. To go into My
Presence, to go into My work, to seek me
for wisdom, to seek My will, and when it
doesn’t seem like it’s working, it’s
gonna take all seven times, but if you
keep going off on the third dip… When you keep going off, when you don’t feel
appreciated or confirmed or validated… if
you keep going off, you are gonna go home
with the same condition that you came to
church with. But if you go in and come
into My presence with Thanksgiving and
enter My courts with praise, if you will
go in and worship Me and go through the
motions when you don’t feel like it’s
working and trust Me and humble yourself, I’ll lift you up. Stand to your feet. And
after his seventh dip in the Jordan, “as
the man of God had told him, his flesh
was restored,” and watch this, “he became
clean.”
It was more than just his skin. It was
his soul. To know that you’ve got to
embrace God’s process to experience His
promise. And the great man, the great man,
Namaan, came out of the Jordan with his
skin restored like “a young boy.” The great
man became like a young boy. That’s about faith, my friend. And I Namaan,
because he went. And I related to Namaan, because he almost left.There’ve been so many
times in my life that God has spoken
something to me that it almost seemed
too simple. It was almost offensive
to me. There’s times where He spoke to me
to let something go I was holding on to.
There’s been times where He wanted me to
go to someone and take responsibility
for my part in a relational conflict.
There’s been times in my life where He
wanted me to own a dysfunction that I
kept trying to justify and explain away.
And I I can only tell you this from
experience is that like Namaan, what I
found is that the cleansing comes in the
process. It comes when you get down in that water
that seems muddy to you and start doing
the dirty work of saying this is what it
is. This is what it is. This is me, and the way that I respond and react, I
can’t keep blaming it on my
environment. I can’t just stay in this
position where I’m fighting all the time.
So, I’m going down. I’m going in. In fact, lift
your hands in the presence of the Lord
right now. That’s the posture of surrender,
and healing only comes through surrender in the presence of God. You can’t receive
God’s transformation on your terms, so
you got to get your hands up high. You
got to know where your help comes from
today. You got to know that the healing
power of Jesus is available to you in
every moment. It’s not something you can
achieve by might or by power. It must be
received by His Spirit. Hey! Thanks for
watching. Make sure to click the
subscribe button on your screen so we
can notify you whenever we release new
content. Go ahead and subscribe now. I’ll
see you next time.