Some Great Thing

II Kings 5:10-13,  “And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be  clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?”

In this passage of Scripture, we find Naaman, a captain of the Syrian army, who has leprosy. He did not know what to do about it until a little maid of his household told him that the prophet back in Israel would be able to help him. Naaman went to go see the prophet Elisha to see if he could perform a miracle and heal his leprosy. Elisha personally did not even see him. He sent his servant to go tell Naaman to wash in the Jordan River seven times. When he was told this, Naaman went away upset. He didn’t understand why he had to wash in the JORDAN River when there were much nicer and cleaner rivers back in his homeland of Syria.

Naaman’s servant turned to him and said if he would have asked you to do some great thing wouldn’t you have done it? Why not just do the simple thing that he asked of you? This is a great question that his servant asked. For those that know the story, Naaman DID decide to go and wash in the Jordan River, and he came out CLEAN! His leprosy was GONE! God was able to work an incredible miracle in his life!

The application I want to pull from this is a simple one, but it is a good one. How can we expect God to work in our lives and do great things when we won’t even do the simple things that we are told to do? There are some people sitting around waiting to be asked to teach a Sunday School class, but they won’t do the simple thing of reading their Bible every day. Some sit around waiting for God to bless their attendance and bring in a lot of people, but they don’t go soul winning and pray. We can’t expect God to do something great in our life if we are not doing the simple things that we know we ought to be doing. Naaman would have never been healed if he decided not to go wash in the Jordan. Thankfully, he chose to do the simple thing and was healed! Think of it this way. You will not receive the blessing of a raise and promotion if you don’t do the simple thing of getting up and going to work every day. God wants to do great things in each and every one of our lives, but we must first do the simple things that he asks of us. Let’s focus on doing the simple things today which in turn will allow God to do His part of doing great things in our life.