If only my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! he would heal him of his leprosy.
II Kings 5: 3
This little slave girl, taken from her home during the Syrian raid of Samaria, was able to bring the commanding general of Israel’s greatest military foe to biblical faith in God. That fact alone is a testament that God is always looking for genuine faith, even from the weakest of us, to accomplish His will and purpose in the earth.
The story is told in 2 Kings 5:1-3, “Now Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was also a mighty man of valor, but a leper. And the Syrians had gone out on raids, and had brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel. She waited on Naaman’s wife. Then she said to her mistress, “If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! For he would heal him of his leprosy.”
Despite the terrible events of her young life, and the loss she suffered as the enemy soldiers snatch her away in the night, her faith in God remained firm. I can only imagine the beauty of her spirit, and the grace in which she carried herself day after day as she served Naaman’s wife. Although the bible does not give any details about her life, or her relationship with Naaman’s wife, it is clear this little slave girl had gained the respect and listening ear of her captor’s wife.
The life we live before others will tell them what we really believe. Naaman’s wife observed how her maid never stopped praying to her God, giving Him thanks and worship. I wonder if Naaman’s wife ever asked her why she stilled worship a God that allowed her to be taken captive and made a slave? I can hear her respond, “Madam, I give God thanks for everything. I could have been killed in the raid, but God spared my life. I could have been given to the soldiers as spoil, but God placed me here in the home of the great Naaman to wait on his wife, where I am shown great kindness. I know that my God lives, and He sees, hears, and moves heaven and earth with the power of His word. Naaman’s wife believed her testimony about the healing power of God because she saw it lived out every day in her little life.
So, when this little slave girl uttered those simple words of faith, “He would heal him of his leprosy”, two kingdoms began to move – the kingdom of Syria and the Kingdom of God. What transpires later in this story would make even the mighty warriors of Syria tremble in reference to God. That day a leper was cleansed because of the faith of a little slave girl. Now it is important for us to note that nowhere in the story of Naaman does it say Naaman had faith. He did not believe until he saw he was cleansed. It was the faith of a little slave girl, who believed God would do for Naaman, a stranger alienated from the covenant of God, what he had not done for anyone else in all of Israel. What great faith!
Dear God, please teach me to exercise the kind of faith that knows no boundaries and brings glory to your Name.
Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.” II Kings 5: 15 (NIV)
Published on Jan 23 @ 3:01 AM EDT
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Pray | Fast | Meditate
Becoming a Better You | Marlin D. Harris
Welcome to our 31-Day Corporate Fast.
In 1988, I was 15 years old, sitting on a plane flying from Oklahoma to Seoul, South Korea. I felt that I was leaving more than a country but leaving my entire concept of normalcy and certainty. I was going from the world I knew to a world that I was completely unprepared to face. My father had received military orders to move from Ft. Drum, New York, and for the next 3 years, live in Taegu, South Korea. Now, this is not uncommon. Military families travel across the globe to new duty stations all the time and often make wonderful and amazing memories and experiences while living in a foreign country. But that was precisely the problem – we were certainly not a family, and this was most definitely not promising to be an amazing memory. My stepmother was a non-functioning alcoholic, and my father was a functioning one. I was placed in their home because my home of origin had become too unstable and abusive for me to live in. I was traveling 5,000 miles away from what I had come to know as normal, with people that I had just met less than 9 months ago. I sat on that plane believing that I was leaving one disaster and heading into another one. Nothing could have convinced me that day that this one experience would have so deeply changed my life and so firmly established my faith and confidence in God.
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Celebration of Discipline
By Richard J. Foster
“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 4:23-24
To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God. —William Temple
To worship is to experience Reality, to touch Life. It is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community. It is a breaking into the Shekinah of God, or better yet, being invaded by the Shekinah of God.
God is actively seeking worshipers. Jesus declares, “The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him” (John 4:23, [italics added]). It is God who seeks, draws, persuades. Worship is the human response to the divine initiative. In Genesis God walked in the garden, seeking out Adam and Eve. In the crucifixion Jesus drew men and women to himself (John 12:32). Scripture is replete with examples of God’s efforts to initiate, restore, and maintain fellowship with his children. God is like the father of the prodigal who upon seeing his son a long way off, rushed to welcome him home.
Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. Its central reality is found “in spirit and truth.” It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit. Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit. The words of the chorus, “Set my spirit free that I may worship Thee,” reveal the basis of worship. Until God touches and frees our spirit we cannot enter this realm. Singing, praying, praising all may lead to worship, but worship is more than any of them. Our spirit must be ignited by the divine fire.
As a result, we need not be overly concerned with the question of a correct form for worship. The issue of high liturgy or low liturgy, this form or that form is peripheral rather than central. We are encouraged in this perception when we realize that nowhere does the New Testament prescribe a particular form for worship. In fact, what we find is a freedom that is incredible for people with such deep roots in the synagogue liturgical system. They had the reality. When Spirit touches spirit the issue of forms is wholly secondary.
To say that forms are secondary is not to say that they are irrelevant. As long as we are finite human beings we must have forms. We must have “wineskins” that will embody our experience of worship. But the forms are not the worship; they only lead us into the worship. We are free in Christ to use whatever forms will enhance our worship, and if any form hinders us from experiencing the living Christ—too bad for the form.
The Object of Our Worship
Jesus answers for all time the question of whom we are to worship. “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (Matthew 4:10). The one true God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God whom Jesus Christ revealed. God made clear his hatred for all idolatries by placing an incisive command at the start of the Decalogue. “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Nor does idolatry consist only in bowing before visible objects of adoration. A. W. Tozer says, “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.” To think rightly about God is, in an important sense, to have everything right. To think wrongly about God is, in an important sense, to have everything wrong.
We desperately need to see who God is: to read about his self-disclosure to his ancient people Israel, to meditate on his attributes, to gaze upon the revelation of his nature in Jesus Christ. When we see the Lord of hosts “high and lifted up,” ponder his infinite wisdom and knowledge, and wonder at his unfathomable mercy and love, we cannot help but move into doxology.
Glad thine attributes confess,
Glorious all and numberless.
To see who the Lord is brings us to confession. When Isaiah caught sight of the glory of God he cried, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5). The pervasive sinfulness of human beings becomes evident when contrasted with the radiant holiness of God. Our fickleness becomes apparent once we see God’s faithfulness. To understand his grace is to understand our guilt.
We worship the Lord not only because of who he is, but also because of what he has done. Above all, the God of the Bible is the God who acts. His goodness, faithfulness, justice, mercy all can be seen in his dealings with his people. His gracious actions are not only etched into ancient history, but are engraved into our personal histories. As the apostle Paul says, the only reasonable response is worship (Rom. 12:1). We praise God for who he is, and thank him for what he has done.
Prayer
Lord, I worship You for the calm reassurance that when I am hard-pressed with thorns and trials, You are working. I believe that You are working on my behalf, facing the enemy that I cannot conquer on my own. I worship You as the champion in the fight, my anchor in the storm, and my hope that eradicates all despair. Thank You for Your faithfulness to me. May I learn to trust You in the quiet seasons, and worship You even more passionately when the thorn presses deep within my side. In Your Name, I pray. Amen.
SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE
Stop. Spend 15 minutes today listening to the voice whispering in the quiet of your heart. Do Hear Him? In the quiet is when He is speaking the loudest. That stirring in your heart; that is God. Only He can nurture your soul.
Foster, Richard J.. Celebration of Discipline, Special Anniversary Edition (pp. 158-160)… SELECTED
Published on Jan 23 @ 12:33 AM EDT
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