In the times of our hearts waiting upon The Lord, what do we do? Do we quiet ourselves? Seek His face and His face alone? Cry out to Him? Go out alone to pray and meditate on His will?
In my time of being sick, I definitely have cried out to Him. Cried out to Him with real tears, with anger, with confusion, with wonder, with hope... Cried out to Him - Him who answers.
But I didn't always do that. My mind ran its laps around trying to fix me. Trying to find the answers on its own. Trying to pull things together on my own strength.
But despite my unfaithfulness, He remained faithful and answered my cries, helped stop my mind from running me into the ground of anxiety and depression, held out His hand, and asked me to say yes.
Yes to Him. Yes to His plan. Yes to relying on Him - not me nor the people around me. Yes to Him and Him alone.
I am saying Yes. I wanted to all along. Even from before I was sick. But I couldn't let go. I couldn't seem to open my hand in order to have it filled full - filled full with His hand.
His hand to lead and guide me. To hold and love me. To comfort and calm me.
In my morning devotions, I read Genesis 24. It talks of Rebekah's marriage proposal to Isaac. How Abraham had made his servant promise to go and find his son a wife - a wife from his kin. And the servant made this convenant to him. He promised and prayed his way to finding Rebekah. He asked God to lead with His angels. To guide him to the one worthy of his master.
He prayed this in his heart, we are told. He didn't shout it out. Praying for a sign of the lady to be the bride. He whispered it in his heart and God provided the sign. Gave the answer. Showed His face clearly.
What must Rebekah have been thinking when her offer of water led to gifts of good and a wedding proposal to her relative - the son of a man with integrity and great faith?
What must she have been thinking when she went back and announced what happened to her? Did she doubt that this was God's plan for her? Did she cry out to God asking why she must leave everyone and everything she knew? Did she try and control things so her plan for her life would work?
Genesis 24 doesn't give any hints to her denying God's plan but rather knowing that this man was blessed and a messenger from above. It was her family that wanted her to stay longer. To keep her. To maybe change the plan that was so suddenly revealed.
But they honoured her, respected her, and asked her opinion.
Her response was simple yet so profound, "I will go."
She says yes. She opens her hands, letting go of her hopes, and takes His. And He guides her to a man that loves her. And upon seeing him in the distance praying and meditating, she humbles herself. Places the veil over her face. She showed humility, honour, and subjection to him.
Have I done that? Have I honoured him? Placed my veil over my face and held onto Him who loves me? Have I let go and said yes? Will I go?
Will you go?
Go to the one who loves abundantly? Our Groom?
Can we say yes to him? Open up our hands again and tell Him we will let go and let Him lead? Let Him lead no matter what? Because however many times we close up our hands, He has His hand open a million more times and extends it to us. He extends it to us and we can let go again and grab onto Him. Onto our True Steadfast and Comforting Love.
And they called Rebekah and said to her, "Will you go with this man?" She said, "I will go." (Genesis 24:58 ESV)
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Part of One Girl's link up called Chasing History about looking at stories of women in the Bible and connecting with them. Seeing how they relate to us today. So here is my story today. Her story that impacted me today. Check out Chasing History for more!
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Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." So Naaman went in and told his lord, "Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel." (2 Kings 5:1-4 ESV)
A story of captivity. A story of a little girl in a place not her own.
The story of how a foreign slave girl who was forced into captivity changed the world.
Her mighty little story.
This is all we hear about this girl. What happened to her? We don't know. But we do know that in her captivity, she was captivated by the God of he home land.
Being carried captive wasn't a mistake. It was part of God's universal plan. His plan of love and providence to all man - not just Israel. And this plan became more evident through a little girl. A girl who must have been scared. In a foreign place with people not her family or friends. Probably forced to do some of the most unthinkable things.
But she also did something unthinkable - something unthinkable that diffused the knowledge of the True and Great Physician.
Although Naaman was a great man, he also had a great thorn in his flesh. Not matter how hard he must have tried to cover his leprosy, people were judging him. Moving away from him. Thinking less and less of him. Avoiding him - purposely and noticeably.
Lepers were cast away. They had to cry out that they were a leper to prevent people from coming too close to them, accidentally touching them. Their identity fully became leper.
And I am sure Naaman knew this. That it was just a matter of time because Namaan the great would become the leper without a name or value.
But this girl, who was not his servant but the servant of his mistress, took a huge step of faith. She believed that her God could save and heal the most rejected and incurable. That He worked mighty wonders through His prophet. That He could do what has never been done. That He would heal, love and include a non-Israelite.
And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." (Luke 4:27)
And because the captive was captivated in the God of miracles, she boasted freely to a great man and nation about her Great Healer.
The Great Healer.
Who healed. And still does.
So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean." But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, "Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, "My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, "Wash, and be clean"?" So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. (2 Kings 5:9-14)
Flesh of a child came because of the heart of a child.
Faith of a small captive girl healed a great man and gave glory to God.
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Part of One Girl's link up called Chasing History about looking at stories of women in the Bible and connecting with them. Seeing how they relate to us today. So here is the first story I looked at. Check out Chasing History for more!
You can read my last one called Daughter about the woman who was healed after 12 years if you missed it!
And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my garments?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, "Who touched me?" " And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." (Mark 5:25-34 ESV, emphasis mine)
I love this story. It is so raw. Her suffering is tangible while her faith is ethereal. Beautiful, raw, and real.
I relate a lot to this story also. And I don't want to put myself in her position or even begin to claim that I know suffering as she does but I can relate a lot and find peace and hope in this story. In this story about a woman who is dying of a disease that brings disgrace and shame. About a woman who is nameless, one in the crowd, hidden - but becomes found and gets named Daughter.
This Daughter of the King had been suffering for 12 years. 12 years of abandonment, fear, closeness to death, and hopelessness. We are told she went to many doctors, tried many remedies, and spent all she had. She became desperate. Where she had placed her hope in, ended up being dry. Taking rather than giving. Leaving her worse off than when it all began. For 12 years... Her hope for healing was in the remedies and not the Healer. Her hope was in what could be seen, what was tested and true, what could be bought and not in Him.
I don't believe this retelling of the Daughter's story is to warn us about medicine or devalue the healing it can bring about. I strongly believe that God can work through medicine to provide miracles. That He does that all the time but we often take the glory for ourselves... Hope in what we can do for ourselves and not what He has provided... But that is a different story.
Like this Daughter, I have tried remedy after remedy. Had opinion after opinion. And haven't been cured. My journey has been less than a year, but it feels like almost all I have known. I cannot remember what it feels like to have strength and vitality flowing through my blood but I know that it will feel glorious when that time comes. And His Daughter, she felt that. She went from utter weakness to full strength - immediately. All it took was for her to reach out to Him for the healing to come.
She trusted that if she all but reached out to Him, she would be made whole. She believed what she had heard about Him and took a step of huge faith.
And in doing so, she proclaimed Him as her refuge and hope. And you know what, it didn't matter that He was her last hope. That she had tried everything else she could do before coming to Him. He still became her sure refuge, hope, and peace.
And He called out to her.
He sought after her, looked for her in the crowd, and tenderly asked, "Who touched me?"
He doesn't ask angrily or condemn her for not asking Him. He speaks to her with encouragement. He commends her. For she had faith.
But she comes to Him with fear and trembling. She falls before Him. Humbles herself before Her King for she knew what He, and He alone did for her. And she tells Him everything. Tells Him things that shouldn't be mentioned in public, if at all. And let alone to the King of kings.
Tells Him of all her suffering and that she believed if she could just touch Him that He could heal her. And He listened to her. To everything she had gone through. Everything she had dealt with and called her Daughter. Not before but after all of this.
Giving her reason to leave in peace and healing - not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And she can leave having every reason to be triumphant because of what He did for her.
And you know, even though I have reached out to Him, cried out to Him for healing, and I haven't felt immediately well, this story still comforts. For I know I serve a God who cares, who listens to the girl in the crowd, who seeks the girl who is suffering, and can heal her and make her whole.
And really, He already has. He has already come and given me the greatest healing. He has taken me out of death and brought me to life. He reaches down and wants to pull us all into life with Him. To make us whole and to make us His precious Daughter.
So because of that I can hope. I can hope in Him that one day I will be whole again. That I can have peace because He reaches out and holds me. Even if the healing doesn't come.
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One Girl started this new link up called Chasing History. It is about looking at stories of women in the Bible and connecting with them. Seeing how they relate to us today. So here is the first story I looked at. Check out Chasing History for more!
