Have you ever gotten upset at someone for telling you something you did not expect? Did you react with shock or negatively? After your initial reaction, did you decide you should listen and digest what you were told? Did find that they had told you the truth?
Receiving unexpected news or instruction can throw us off balance. We can react in unexpected ways. We may be in disbelief. We may be angry. We may want to completely disregard what they told us. Yet, there may be a nagging feeling deep inside that they may be right.
Naaman found himself is just such a situation. He was sent to Elisha to be healed of a skin disease. Naaman was an important man, a commander of the army of the king of Aram. As a high ranking official, he thought he would be treated with deference. He thought Elisha would come out to meet him. He thought Elisha would give him some challenging thing to do to be healed.
When Elisha merely sent a messenger to tell him to go wash himself in the Jordan river seven times, Naaman felt disrespected. He felt that Elisha had shunned him. He was upset. He thought Elisha might be a fraud. It was good for Naaman that one of his servants talked to him and got him to do what Elisha told him to do. Naaman was healed.
There are times we are told things we don’t want to believe. Rather than immediately disbelieving, we would be better served to take a little time to think about what we’ve been told. We just might discover that what we were told is for our best interest. Perhaps it is God’s way of working through someone else for our good.
I pray we all seek to listen for God speaking to us. I pray we evaluate our initial reaction. I pray each one of us will take time to think and ask God to reveal to us the truth of his message. Listen for God. Evaluation your reactions. Take time to think. Ask God to reveal his truth to you.
2 Kings 5:10-11 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the skin disease!”
Marty Pressey 