Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”
2 Kings 5:10
What an intimate and powerful story in the Bible of a man called Naaman. A valiant warrior, captain of the hosts and a champion of a soldier! He was a general. A leader. A man that reached the pinnacle of his career. He was successful. But he was also a man that had leprosy.
What a disease to be suffering with silently and try to keep undetected from peers and other workers. Yet there was a woman that he did reveal the most private and shameful piece of his life. There this little maid was as she saw his skin covered and contaminated by sickness. A woman that had been captured at that.
She knew the cure to his crisis.
When she does point the way in a direction for him to obtain healing it happens to be further into a place of contamination! When the prophet sends a message to him and advises him to dunk in the polluted Jordan river, Naaman is livid!
But there was something that God was trying to teach Naaman.
There was something that God wanted to wash out of the life of Naaman and it wasn’t just an external sickness that was rotting away on his flesh. It was something fleshly about his inner nature that he was trying to strip from him and wash him clean.
He didn’t know God like that. He didn’t serve God like that. But here God was leading him to his healing and it was going to be down a road of humility. The healing was in his humility. He had the cure to his crisis. The was a lesson in the leprosy. In the pollution there was a purpose. He would use the contaminated to fix him of his external contamination and bring of bond of healing to the internal contamination that was hindering him from that everlasting encounter that he needed with the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
SEVEN times. A number that represents completion. A complete victory. A complete fulfillment. A complete washing and cleansing internally and externally. God was turning this turmoil in the life of Naaman into a true triumph that would last eternal in his soul.
How many times does God ask us to dunk? Especially when we don’t get it the first time.
How many times to we find ourselves in a sick cycle repeating the same errors?
How many times will it take until we really get what God is trying to complete and fulfill in our lives?
SEVEN! Six months already gone by. What have we accomplished INWARDLY? What have we learned spiritually? What are we doing that will keep us in that place of humility and move from the masses of distraction?
This July–as I search internally in prayer and meditation, I want to rework my day and my time as I am in such a new transition. I want to give even more when it is even harder to do so. Seven. A half year already gone by and another one left.
May we take this fast paced time and use it ever so wisely, not only to absorb the life lessons that God has for us but to use every challenge as an opportunity to advance in the assignment that God has specifically ordered for us.
He invites us in–even in the places that look and feel so contaminated. He uses it as bait to strip us of anything that tries to contaminate our souls. And just like Naaman we will find our healing in the humility he brings us to. We will find an even deeper life of worship to our King and our God.
Amen.
With love,
Christina ❤
