Obedience Required

What do you do when God asks you to do something when you've come to Him asking for healing?

That's the question that I spent time pondering the last few days. I was reading 2 King 5, where Naaman goes to Elisha to seek healing of his leprosy. When Elisha tells Naaman to dip seven times in the Jordan and then he will be healed, Naaman initially refuses to do so.

2 Kings 5:11-14 says:

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. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a rage.
Naaman's servants went to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!" So he went down and dipped himslef in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Elisha told Naaman the healing he was seeking would come from his obedience. But Naaman was not interested at first. He was enraged at the thought of what he had been asked to do.

It wasn't until his servants challenged his thinking and encouraged him to follow through that Naaman was able to experience the fullness of God's healing in his life.

This made me wonder . . . 

How do I respond to what God asks me to do when I come to Him seeking healing?

Am I annoyed or angry that I have something I need to do in obedience?

Do I see the things of obedience God asks of me as ridiculous, or of getting in the way of what I was asking for?

Or, am I willing, like Naaman eventually was, to follow through?

I think that often our obedience is required for us to experience the fullness of God's healing in our lives. 

Not that God can't or won't heal us other ways. He can and He does. It's not hard to find stories of that.

But, I also think that we often have a part to play in the healing we're asking God to bring - whether that healing be physical, emotional, or spiritual. He heals us in the moment, but it's as we walk out what He says in obedience that we experience the fullness of it.

The Danger of Being One Step Off God's Path

Sometimes it seems like there's nothing to worry about is we're just a little but out of line in one area of our lives - especially if it seems small, and we're just one step outside of God's path. We don't really worry about it because we're not really that far off. Little do we realize how dangerous this is.

The life and reign of King Solomon in Israel illustrates this quite clearly. Solomon was known for his wisdom - the thing he asked God for. King Solomon had it all, but he was led astray and ended up far from God's ways.

1 Kings 3 records a well-known part of Solomon's story in Scripture. This is where he is given the chance to ask God for whatever he wants and he chooses to ask for wisdom. Because of his choice, God blessed him, not only with the wisdom he asked for, but also wealth and a long life (1 Kings 3:10-15).

Every time I've turned to this passage, that has been the focus. And it's important. But, the other day when I started reading, I was stopped by just the first three verses of this chapter. They have something important to teach us.

1 Kings 3:1-3 says:

"Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the city of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places."

Near the beginning of Solomon's reign as king, we can see the subtle ways he's being pulled off God's path. There's two key ways given in this passage.

First, Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh king of Egypt. The Egyptians were not followers of Yahweh. She would have had her own god and religious practices she brought with her into this marriage.

Second, Solomon continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense at the high places. The high places were where the gods of the peoples surrounding Israel would have been worshiped and their practices were detestable to Yahweh. But, Solomon was still participating in it.

Yes, it was good that Solomon was walking in God's ways in the rest of his life. And we see the benefits of that in the rest of 1 Kings 3. The long-term effects of these two things couldn't yet be seen. But, if we take a quick glance ahead at the end of Solomon's life, we see how his wives who each had their own gods and religious practices led him astray and he was far from God's ways. The pattern intensified as Solomon's life went on, but if began subtly, here at the beginning of his reign.

Much of Solomon's life as recorded in 1 Kings 3 was about living God's way. Looking at his life, it would have been easy to see the things he was doing that pleased Yahweh. And that would make it easier to justify that these other two things didn't really matter - that they were insignificant.

And that's exactly what we do. It's often easy to justify a couple of little things, especially if the rest of life is being done God's way. But, there's a huge danger lurking here. We might only be one step off God's path right now, but if we continue to go int hat direction, it won't take long for us to be much further off.

And we don't often realize how far off we've gotten until it's a long way back to God's path. By the time we realize it, we're distant and have lost the intimacy with God we once had.

Are there places in your life where you need to get back on God' path before you've ended up a lot further away then you ever intended to get?

Changing Our Thinking

What do you do when your mind is going in a direction you don't want it to go?

What do you do when your caught up in patterns of anxiety in your mind and you're not sure how to stop them?

Is there any way we can change our thinking?

The answer is that, yes, we can change our thinking.

But, if we're looking for an easy fix, then we're going to have a problem. There's no promise of an easy fix.

Scripture does make it clear that our minds can be renewed - that we can change the way we think.

Romans 12:2 tells us that we can "be transformed by the renewing of our mind." 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 talks about our ability to take thoughts captive to make them obedient to Christ. In Philippians 4:8, Paul tells us to think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.

These Scriptures would indicate that we do have the ability to change the way we think. We can choose to think on something different. We have that ability.

But, how do we do that? What does it look like?

What about when it seems like we can't change our thought patterns, not matter how hard we try?

I think the key to this is returning to Scripture. We need to take the time to find the truth of what Scripture says, and then we need to fill our minds with it.

This isn't an instant process. We may have to continually remind ourselves of the truth of Scripture. It's something we have to be intentional about, until it becomes our habit.

As I've learned this process in my own life, I've seen how it can and has changed my thinking over time. I've had to be intentional about it - especially in the moments when it's easiest for my thinking to go back to those old ways.

One of the things, I've learned is of the importance of having the truths from God's Word ready when I'm in the midst of a struggle. Those are the times when I need to be able to remind myself of God's truth clearly. Sometimes, this means going back to Scripture I've memorized.

Other times, it's actually having those Scriptures in a list that I can easily pull up an read - often out loud. This is especially true when it's a bigger challenge in my thinking. For me, one of those times is when my anxiety starts to take over my thinking. Then, the only way I might be able to stop it is to start declaring the truth of God's Word out loud and I need to have it where I can easily read it and access it. For me, that means it's actually in a note on my phone. Since my phone is pretty much always within reach of me, this is a helpful place for me to have this list of Scriptures.

Just because we find the Scripture and the truth doesn't mean it's going to instantly change. We have to commit to the process and be willing to dig in with it every time the issue arises again. Some days, it seems to have more impact on changing my thought life, than others. But, over time, it is slowly changing things.

The important thing is that we continue to go back to the truth of Scripture to change the way we think. No matter how many times we have to go back.