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.