BETTER THAN JORDAN?
Greetings great people. I trust that this finds you well.
I usually don’t write posts this long but this one just showed up and poured out. I even had to restrain myself at some points. I actually had a different post prepared but on Friday, this one rained down and I decided to go with the flow. I hope that you’ll make it to the end and that it will minister to you. I believe this is a word for somebody. It sure is a word for me.
They say that mothers are their children's first doctors. They are not mistaken. I saw it first-hand during my stint in the hospital. Many of them would prescribe, ‘un-prescribe’, ‘de-prescribe’, and ‘re-prescribe’ their children’s treatment. Forgive the English. I’m just trying to express how they did all manner of things. They looked like they knew more than the doctors. Sometimes it helped, but many times it was detrimental. I then understood why, when we were being admitted, a doctor advised me to simply obey what the doctors instructed and we would be alright. It seems like they know us mothers. When the doctor says, “This is the way to go.” We opt for another way that looks better to us.
I read about a man in the Bible who also wanted to prescribe his treatment because he did not like the one he had been given. His name was Naaman.
2 Kings 5:10-12 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.
Emphasis mine.
God, through the mouth of His servant, revealed to Naaman where he would go and get his cleansing. He didn’t seem to like the choice. He knew of better rivers. Why not go and dip in those?
Before we throw stones at Naaman, think about it. Don’t we behave like that sometimes? God is a God of times and seasons, yes, but He's also a God of appointed people and appointed places. We tend to focus more on the former. We always want to get the timing right but we also need to get the people and the places right.
2 Samuel 7:10 Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more; neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any more, as beforetime,
The places He appoints for us are for our good, as can be seen in the above verse, but sometimes we may not like those places. Something about them may not sit well with us.
Say you desire to go for missions and have set your sights on some goodly lands and then God sends you to some rural area? By the way, this happened to Mel Tari. I’ll get back to this.
Say He leads you to a certain church but some things about the church do not sit well with you and you say to yourself, “Aren’t so and so churches better than this? May I not join those and still experience what I need to?”
Say He sends you to a university in some faraway village and you ask yourself, “Are not so and so universities so much better than this? Can I not go to one of them and still become who I need to become?”
Say He leads you to a certain workplace and because of the unfriendly work environment or working conditions, you say to yourself, “Aren’t so and so companies better than this? May I not go and work there, earn more and enjoy more benefits?”
A brother shared a testimony related to this. He was being given a hard time at his place of work and he had had it. He decided to quit. He wrote his letter and then went to a servant of God to request prayers concerning the transition. As they prayed, the word of the Lord came instructing him to stay and not leave. This reminds me of the time when Hagar ran away from her mistress (Gen 16:6-9). This post is already long enough as it is so let me not delve into that.
Thankfully, Naaman had SERVANTS who gave him good counsel and he was humble enough to LISTEN. He went and dipped in the Jordan and was cleansed from his leprosy.
2 Kings 5:13 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? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
Allow me to ask you a question. If Naaman had gone to dip in River Abana or River Pharpar, would he have been cleansed? It would not have been TOTAL disobedience by the way. He would still dip himself 7 times as prescribed, just not in River Jordan. Selah.
I can only say that God is merciful.
If you have options that are better than “Jordan” (God’s appointed place for you), then
Here's the Declaration:-
Allow the Holy Spirit to lead you. The all-knowing, all-seeing God, the one who made us and has the plan for our lives, is best placed to advise us concerning the way we should take in life. There are many times that I have instructed our toddler, (and I know many parents can relate), not to do certain things but he thinks he knows better and still goes ahead and does them. It usually does not end well and when that happens, I tell him that I know more than him and I know better. I can foresee the end result of the thing he wants to do and that’s why I counsel him against it. It’s to protect him. I do it out of love for him. It’s for his good. If we flawed humans know how to do this, how much more our loving Heavenly Father? The end of God’s leading is always good though His pathway may not make sense to us sometimes. Trust the process. If there are unsettling things about your appointed place, pray about them. They'll either change or you'll mature to a point where they do not bother you anymore.
“Obedience may be costly but the end reward is priceless.” Bishop David Oyedepo.
Prayerfully listen to counsel. When we already have “that better place” set up in our hearts, it may not be easy to obtain guidance directly from the Lord for we must come to Him empty if we want Him to fill us with the knowledge of His will. God, in his mercy, might use the people around us to help us along in the right direction, just like He used Naaman’s servants.
“The proof that God can talk to you is that men can talk to you and you listen.” Apostle Johnson Suleman.
In closing;
I know of a woman who wanted to quit her marriage because her husband had become “too much”. A few days later she told me that she had thought it through and had decided against the move because every man has his issues. She figured that she might go elsewhere and find other things that are hard to cope with so she saw that it was better to just hang in there and try to make things work.
She was right! There's no perfect person and there’s no perfect place, no matter how good they may appear to be. The land Lot chose for himself looked very good in his sight.
Genesis 13:10 And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.
If you do not know how that one ended, get it from me, it did not end well for Lot. I believe that if he had consulted God, He would have clued him in and led him away from that wicked place if he had been willing to obey.
Let’s work this one out together.
Consider all the places you are in right now: where you’re working, churching, residing, where your children are schooling, etc. Ask yourself, “Did God say so?” Open your heart and allow Him to speak to you concerning the places you are in and the ones you need to be in. He is our shepherd and His sheep hear His voice. If you find something that you need to correct, obtain mercy and grace from Him to do so. It is for your good.
Back to Mel Tari’s story. This is how he describes how he begged God to send him to America.
One day I was desperate. “Lord, why don’t You choose me?” I asked. “You chose my sister and she’s no more spiritual or better than me. As a matter of fact, she is worse than me in many things. When You compare the others to me, I am as fit as they are and, Lord, maybe better.” The Lord spoke to me in a still small voice. “Mel, your motives are wrong. You want to serve Me, but not in the hard places of the jungles. You want to go all over the world, and that is not right. So I cannot use you now.
God knows what’s best for us. He’ll PERMIT us to go where we want to, that’s why He gave us free will, but it’s best to go after His PERFECT will for us. By the way, Mel finally went to America to preach.
Psalm 23:1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
He is our good shepherd. Let’s try to be His good sheep.
Let me throw in this clip just for fun. It begins with the story of Naaman. We did this almost a decade ago but the message still speaks because it carries scripture.
Until the next one,
God’s best!