Let’s start
today’s devotional like a preacher – that is to say open with an old joke.
A farmer's in the middle of a flood. The river is
overflowing, with water surrounding his house up to his front porch. He's
standing there watching the water rising, and a guy rows up in a boat.
The guy says "Jump in! I'll take you to safety." The farmer crosses his arms and says
stubbornly, "Nope, I put my trust in God."
So the boat goes away.
The water rises so high that the farmer's climbing up on
his roof when another boat comes by. The man says to the farmer,
"Jump in! I'll row you to safety. "The farmer struggles up on
the roof but again says, "Nope, I put my trust in God."
So the boat goes away.
The water rises so high that the farmer is standing on the
very top of his chimney with barely enough room for both feet with water
completely surrounding him and still rising…when a helicopter flies over and
drops a rope ladder. The pilot yells down to the farmer "I'll save
you! Climb up the ladder."
The farmer says as he’s falling into the water, "Nope, I put my trust in
God."
So the helicopter flies away.
The water keeps rising, and the farmer
drowns. He gets to heaven, and God sees him and says "What are you doing here?" The farmer says "I’m wondering the same
thing! I put my trust in You, and You
let me down." God says, "What
do you mean, I let you down? I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more
did you want me to do?!"
What more did you
want me to do? In Joshua 6, God tells
them to walk around the walls of Jericho.
Do it once a day for 6 days, then on the seventh day, do it seven
times. Then have priests blow the rams’
horns. When you hear the rams’ horns,
pretend you’ve heard the secret word and “scream real loud”. And all of Israel said, “Really? Walk some laps, toot a horn and yell at the
wall? That’s your plan, God? Have you seen that wall? It’s a big wall, God. Not quite sure that walking around the wall
is going to do much except reiterate to us how big it is. And we’re also pretty sure that a horn
concert for the wall and some Braveheart-type yelling at the wall isn’t going
to do much either, but whatever you say, God.”
They did, the wall collapsed, and Israel defeats Jericho.
2 Kings
5…Naaman…Commander of the Syrian Army gets leprosy. He goes to his king, who sends an email over
to Israel’s king and tells him that they’ve heard that maybe Israel’s God can
help. Israel’s king thinks it’s a
trap. But good old Elisha, who asked for
and then got double the spirit that Elijah had, says to them, “God’s got
this.” So Elisha tells his servant to go
tell Naaman, “Go wash in the river seven times, and the leprosy will wash
away.” And Naaman gets mad. “Who are you, and where’s Elisha? And what do you mean just go wash it away? It’s leprosy, mon frère! It isn’t going to wash away. Seven times or a hundred and seven times
isn’t going to matter much. It’s
LEP-PRO-SEE! You can’t scrape leprosy
off even with Lava Soap, and that stuff could take the fish stink off of
Jonah! And it’s not even like it’s even some
grand quest to go find some miracle cure – just go wash in the river! Bah! What
kind of stupid cure is that? But fine,
whatever, I’ll play your silly little game!”
And Naaman goes and washes seven times.
And what happens? 2 Kings 5:14
says that his skin became as smooth as a young child’s. Had it happened today, I have no doubt Naaman
would have bottled it and sold it on a late night infomercial.
Meanwhile, on the
Numbers 21 channel, they had just gone to commercial at verse 7 with the Israelites
being bitten by snakes. They were dying
left and right and begging for help.
Coming out of commercial, God is telling Moses to put a snake on a stick
and have the people look at it to heal the snake bites. So Moses builds a bronze snake and puts it on
a pole and tells the people, “God says he will heal you of your snake bites and
all you have to do to get this miracle is look at the snake. You don’t have to call now. You don’t have to send $19.99. You don’t need to send 5 UPC symbols to
Battle Creek, Michigan. Just look at the
snake.” And Israel (I feel sure) said, “Really?
Folks dead all over and you expect us to believe that just LOOKING at
some snake-stick is going to heal us? I
think I’m delirious and losing consciousness, Moses, because I’m just hearing
things now. I mean, I really think I
just heard you tell me that looking at a snake on a stick would heal me.
Riiiight.” But what happened to those
that looked at the snake? They lived.
Then there’s the
Thanksgiving sermon over in Luke 17.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem…He’s somewhere between Samaria and
Galilee, and there’s ten lepers. They
see Jesus coming and start yelling to Him, “Have mercy on us! Heal us!” And what does He tell them? Does Jesus say, “Presto Chango No Mo’
Lepro”? Nope. He tells them to go and show themselves to
the priests. The Bible says they go, but
it doesn’t record conversation. I’m sure
it was more of the same for the first little bit. “Oh sure, Jesus, we’ll walk over there and
show ourselves to the priests. Why
not? They’ve not told us before that we
have leprosy. They’re not the ones that
ran us out here and called us unclean.
I’m sure they’re gonna LOVE us just walking up in the middle of
everything just to show them our leprosy…AGAIN.” And then one notices that as they’ve walked
on, they’ve been slowly getting better.
And what does
Jesus tell the one of the ten that came back to thank Him? “Your faith has made you well.” And therein lies the point of the whole devotional
with all of its silly made-up conversations.
We shouldn’t just sit back, doing nothing and wait for God to fix things
for us. Listen for the Whisper that
tells you to not just “Humpf” up with our arms crossed, sit on the couch, and
refuse to budge until God fixes our situation.
Maybe He’s given you several windows to jump through. Maybe He’s sent 2 boats and then a helicopter
of opportunity for you to use. But you
didn’t want to walk around the wall for a week because it seemed unproductive for
crumbling your wall (but it will). Or
didn’t want to try and bathe away leprosy because the problem you have isn’t
something you think can wash away so easily (but it will). Or you refuse to look at a snake pole to be
healed because something as bad as your
snakebite won’t be healed by looking at some stupid pole (but it will). Or maybe you refuse to go show your problems
to anyone, and there’s no point in going and showing them again because simply
doing what Jesus tells you won’t fix your problems (but it will). Instead you wanted to just sit there and wait
for God to miracle you out of whatever predicament you’re in. Maybe like Salvation, God wants to see if
you’re serious about believing Him. Sure
He could just snap His fingers and fix your problem. And sometimes He does. And sometimes He asks you do something that
seems insanely ineffectual simply to make sure that when it’s all over, there’s
NO doubt who it was that solved your problem.
Because then you’ll say, “You’ll never believe this, but…” and then
you’ll give God the glory when you tell someone how you were rescued.
~Dwayne
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