Part 3

Okay, yes. Well we’re back. Where were we?

They sprang into action. Oh my goodness….Have you ever thought about it that it’s usually men who start wars? I wonder why that is. 😂

So the king of Syria, this guy who is terrorizing the northern kingdom of Israel, sends a letter to the king of Israel and says, I’m sending you my great and mighty general with an attaché. He has leprosy (cancer). I want you to make him well.

Can you imagine how THAT went over to the king of Israel?

Was he God that he could heal a dreaded disease like leprosy? I mean, the best he could do was to have his own CDC and Surgeon General throw people into a leper colony if they turned up with it. Now here this crazy king is demanding that he heals his top general. Clearly he was trying to start yet another war.

So of course, he did what any sane person would do.

He tore his clothes.

Can you imagine the headlines on that one!

King Goes Full Monty Today While On A Stroll After Dinner….or something like that.

What ever happened it was significant enough that the holy man, Elisha heard about it and he quickly sent word to the palace to tell the king to send Naaman to him. Because, Oh, you know, Naaman needs to know there is a prophet of God in Israel.

So that’s what happened.

When Naaman and his men got to Elisha’s house. A messanger opened the door and reads from a little note crunched up in his hand.

“ Um, okay. The holy man Elisha, says to go down to this river we have, it’s called the Jordan River.

You’ll recognize it because of all the immigrants that are crossing over it.

And he says to dunk down in it and wash yourself five….no wait, sorry that’s a seven….

Dunk in the water seven times…yeah, I think that’s it.

Good luck!

Click. And the door went shut.

The Bible tells this proud beautiful man was furious. He felt humiliated and insulted.

“He didn’t even have decency to come out and talk to me!”

“I thought he would surely come out and wave his arms around and have me go into some sweat shack, and smoke some stuff, align my chakra or something!”

All he wants me to do is dunk into that disgusting muddy Jordan river full of garbage and humanity. If it’s a river we need Syria has way better, cleaner, rivers than this place!”

“No thanks!” And he roared out of there in his magnificent horses and chariots.

As they were going along for a bit his young sword carrier ( maybe he too was a captive taken in a raid) that was in the chariot with him, timidly clears his throat and says “My father, what this holy man said is a great thing. It’s so great that he doesn’t even need to do anything special. It doesn’t matter if you do what you imagined he would have you do, or if you do something stupid like dunk in the muddy Jordan River.”

So after a bit, the mighty Naaman turned around and went to the Jordan River.

He dunked seven times and on the seventh time he came up and his chest was as smooth and clean and glistening,rippling with muscle and health.

Naaman knew without a doubt that there was a creator God that was sovereign over anything he knew anything about. And whatever his mysterious purposes were, he chose to heal him.

In fact, it so profoundly changed him, that he asked Elisha if he could take back two mule loads of dirt to Syria because as the top general in the army he was obligated to do pay tribute and homage to his king’s worthless idols. But he wanted to put the dirt on the place that was his spot to do this stuff. So when he did these things he was on the holy ground from Israel where he had encountered the real, true God.

Jewish tradition has it that God used Naaman to kill one of the most wicked kings in Israel, Ahab, whose wife was the notorious Wicked woman Jezebel. The Bible doesn’t tell us that, but it would be kind of cool if that’s the way it was.

Sooo, what I got out of this is is that it doesn’t matter if it’s expensive chemotherapy or horse wormer that you get down at Atwood’s the one who heals is God. And he heals for a specific purpose. Because are things in the unseen world going on we have no idea about.

So for me I have my rivers of Damascus (chemotherapy) and I have my muddy Jordan River (Randy’s Protocol). But my faith isn’t in either one. I’m simply being obedient to follow the physical instructions. And let God decide if my healing will be here or over there in the spiritual realm.

Well, that’s the end of story time with Grandma.

I hope you all have a day filled with grace and peace and hope as you are beating cancer today.