Compassion, Faith and Humility The Story of Naaman’s Servant

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She was captured. taken from all she had known, everyone she had known, to a foreign land. A land full of strange god’s, full of things she had been bought up to believe were evil. Forced to serve in the household of her homeland’s enemies. The wife of one of the commanders of the same army who had come and taken her. The memory of being taken still woke her up in the night. And yet she had no choice but to stay and to serve.

The girl could have grown bitter. Forgotten her home, forgotten the God she had once trusted. After all he had left her alone.

The master of the house had his own troubles, a skin disease, leprosy, which would cause an excruciating and prolonged death.

The girl could have rejoiced in his misfortune, afterall he was a big part of all that was wrong in her life.

But she didn’t. “I don’t know why he doesn’t go to a prophet in my land, he will heal him.” And she a servant girl, who’s name was never recorded, set forth a chain of events which let to Naaman’s healing, one which changed his body and his soul.

The more I read this passage. The more amazing I think this girl is.

I know that this is but one incident, barely a paragraph, in a whole life, but I like to think that the faith of this young girl (possibly around twelve) shows us an insight into her character, and that there is much we can learn from her.

She was taken from her home land by an army. A young girl taken by a group of bloodthirsty men. I won’t say anymore than this, but we can assume that this was not a pleasant experience, and that that there is much that happened during her capture that was never recorded in scripture.

Compassion

First of all lets talk about her compassion for her master. Or perhaps we could call him captor. He was a major part of the machine which had taken her from her home. And yet, when he was facing sickness she did not rejoice. She sought to help him. She sought to see him healed and restored.

She was traumatised and alone in a foreign country. And yet she kept hold of her faith. We know this because when faced with a problem, she remembered her God, and a prophet who could heal her master.

Faith

This is quite incredible faith. How many people would have lost faith in the God of miracles, when they are themselves trapped in a nightmare. And yet, even though God hadn’t set her free from her circumstances, she trusted that he could

It is easy to have faith in a good God when we find ourselves in good circumstances. But what about when we are struggling. What about when we are trapped. To have faith in a God who can perform miracles, when he doesn’t seem to be doing one for us.

To be able to say God is good when life is bad takes incredible faith.

Humility

This girl probably had the least influence of anyone in that story, and yet she was willing to stand up, and say what she thought her master could do. I know that there are many times in my own life when I have failed to stand up in this way, because I was too scared to rock the boat.

You only have to glance at social media to see how many people long to have influence over others. But who is that influence really benefitting. I would argue that it is often only themselves: their ego, or their bank balance. And in a small way I’m sure we can see this in the way that we ourselves use social. But this girl used her influence to help somebody was was effectively her enemy. Who stood up for her beliefs when she was the only one who had them, and used her little influence to change a life. And we don’t even know what her name was.

Wow!

How I long to be like that.

Jesus tells us, at the start of his famous sermon on the mount.

God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.

Matthew 5:5 New Living Translation

In this world, it feels like we have to push our self to the front to get noticed, but the bible flips this on its head and tells us that God blesses the bumble.

Writing a blog it can be tricky to balance this. I don’t know if any other bloggers can relate, but as soon as I hit publish I am there refreshing my dashboard to see how many people have read my blog, and if I have any new followers or comments. I know I need to remember this girl who was compassionate, faithful and humble in these situations, and try and be a little bit more like her. What about you?

If you would like to read more about Naaman’s wife’s servant you can do in 2 kings: 5.

This is part of my series on women in the bible who’s names we don’t know. You can read more here.

Blessings,

Alice x

P.S. If you would like to keep up to date with Me Set Free then you can subscribe here.

Don’t Look Back (the story of Lot’s wife)

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

A while ago it occurred me just how often we don’t know the names of Characters in the bible. Many of them do great things, and make a difference to history.

Lot’s wife isn’t one of them. She makes a brief appearance, and then becomes a pillar of salt. This is her story:

“Run and don’t look back.” That’s what they told me when we left the city. Left behind everything we had ever known.

“Run, and don’t look back.” That’s what the strange men said.

But what were we running towards. Lot didn’t seem to have an answer for that, neither did the angelic men. Only that we needed to run. And not look back.

But why shouldn’t I look back to the place where I had spent so many years. My friends were there, and so was my home. Surely one last look at the place where I had given birth to and raised my children wouldn’t hurt. Just so I could remember.

I know it wasn’t the best place to raise them. There was all kinds of evil going on, one of my neighbours had even sacrificed her baby to to the god of those people. Just thinking about it made me sick. But still, we had made a home there and memories too.

One look over my shoulder, one look at home, and security wouldn’t hurt, would it?

But it did, didn’t it?

Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt. She never got to know what her future could hold, because she couldn’t fully leave her past behind and trust God. While it’s unlikely that we will experience the same fate as her, spending a lot of time focusing on the past isn’t necessarily helpful of healthy.

Looking back with longing

I’m sure that we all know someone who’s life seems empty, because all they can think about is the past. They spend so much time thinking about what happened when they were younger, that they forget to enjoy themselves now. They forget to make new memories. Their past, whether good or bad seems to consume everything. Maybe we can even see a glimpse of this in ourselves. Maybe there are a few years from your life when things felt so easy and right, that you can’t help going back to that place in your mind over and over again. This kind of looking back clearly isn’t healthy if it robs us of our future, and even our present.

Being so filled with fear for the present that we bury ourselves in the past.

Wow, this is a hard one isn’t it. And I think that it goes hand in hand with my previous point. sometimes we can look back at the past because we are scared of where we are or where we are going.

Maybe there is a genuine reason for that fear. I know that I have felt like this when I have clearly been in a place where God didn’t want me to be, and I had to do something to get out of that situation.

But, if like Lot’s wife, we are exactly where God want’s us, we need to start focusing our energies on this time. Maybe we need to make the effort to make new friends, or spend time listening to God, to work out exactly what he wants us to be doing. If we are so fearful that we aren’t taking the time to do these things, then we can say that this kind of looking back is unhelpful.

I’m not saying looking back is never a good thing. But when looking back stops us from moving forward, of course it is. And we need to take control of that.

But looking back isn’t always a bad thing. We know that denying our past is not helpful, and that there is much we can learn and remember.

To reflect and learn

They say that a definition of a fool is to keep on doing the same thing and expect a different result. If we can’t look back critically how can we ever expect to do better? How can we ever expect to learn?

Taking time at the end of the day, to reflect on what has happened, to see where we have gone wrong is so important, so that we don’t keep on making mistakes. While I was studying at bible college one of our lecturers would repeatedly tell us that we are reflective practitioners. We needed to reflect on what we had done, so that we could avoid making the same mistakes, and get better.

This is also true on a larger scale. Maybe there is a pattern in our life or family, that we need to look back at, and reflect on before we can break free from it. But sometimes looking back purely to remember isn’t such a bad thig.

To remember

There is a real place for this. In Old Testament times, God often instructed the Israelites to pile up stones so that they could remember what God has done. So that they could have a physical reminder of what had gone before, that they would know that God can do it again.

It’s important that we look back at the past, to remember what God has done, to remember the good times, perhaps people that we have lost. And to even remember some of the pain. Remembering builds faith. We remember that God never left us or let us down, and that he never will.

So lets be wise about how we view the past, not becoming so caught up in it that we find ourselves trapped; instead learning from it and growing from it as we trust God for our freedom.

This is the second in my series about nameless characters from the bible, you can read the rest here.

Twelve Years: The Woman Jesus Healed from Bleeding

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Image by 1388843 from Pixabay

For twelve years I had been bleeding, without stopping. For twelve years I had been unclean. For twelve years anyone that I touched had been unclean. Anyone who sat where I had been sitting would be unclean. I was an outcast. No one wanted to be near me. This bleeding pushed everyone away. Because when you are unclean, everyone is scared of you.

I was desperate, I spent every penny I had on trying to get better. I had sat back and watched my friends lives go on, while mine was on pause for twelve years. Gradually people drifted away from me, they didn’t care about the unclean woman. I missed sitting to a meal with my family. Over twelve years I had lost all hope of this ever stopping.

But then I began to hear stories of a man who could heal people, he even bought someone who was dead back to life. I had to meet him. I became obsessed by it. This had to be the answer to my prayers. I would hang around waiting to see if he would come past. Listening out to hear where he might be heading next. One day there was a huge commotion. I knew it had to be him, it had to be Jesus. He was surrounded again, but I knew this was my chance. If I didn’t do it now I never would. So I pushed through the crowd, not worrying about who I touched for the first time in a long time. Then I reached out and touched him. Well not actually him, just the cloak he was wearing. And Immediately I knew it had worked! I turned away to sneak off before anyone could notice

“Who did this?”

I was terrified. “it was me,” I whispered as my knees gave way. “I did it.” And then I explained why to all the people, hoping they would take pity on me.

“And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

“And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.

Mark 5:34

A story hidden between another Miracle, perhaps and a woman whose name time has forgotten.

When we read this story its easy not to realise the kind of suffering that she had faced. It wasn’t just the awkward pain of having a period that lasted more than twelve years. It was twelve years of almost complete social isolation. This bleeding meant that she was unclean and according to the Jewish laws anyone she touched was unclean, anyone who sat on a seat she had sat on was unclean, and stayed that way until evening. So people would have avoided her.

We don’t know anything else about her life circumstances, was she married? Single? Young or old? With or without children? Rich or poor? At the end of the day, none of this mattered, her illness made her live a life of isolation. I am sure that after this year many of us could relate to that. but imagine multiplying this year by twelve, and then knowing that you are facing that suffering alone. That’s why she spent everything she had on trying to get better. That’s why she was so desperate to get to Jesus. Her healing wouldn’t just make her body better, it would change everything for her. It would give her a future, it would change her entire existence.

He healed her, yes. He gave her a hope for the future, one which now had posebilities, But he also called her daughter. Can you imagine how that sort of acceptance would have felt for someone who had spent so much time alone. For someone who’s future seemed to have been ripped away. Jesus didn’t just heal her body, he restored her, and made her whole, and he sent her in his peace. Something that she probably hadn’t experienced for all the years of her suffering.

When we encounter Jesus, it doesn’t just change one part of our life. It doesn’t work like that. it changes everything. it must change everything. He doesn’t just set us a little bit free, he sets us completely free.

But sometimes taking hold of this complete freedom feels scary. We hold bits back. But Jesus accepts us, he calls us daughter and longs for us to be completely restored.

This post is part of a new series, in which we look at the stories of people found in the bible, whose names have been lost in history. You can read more here.

This story can be found in Mark 5.21-43, which focuses on two different healings.

How to Bloom

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I’ve not got a good track record when it comes to house plants. But one that I have managed to keep alive is my Christmas cactus. I even succeeded in getting it to bloom this year.

There are a couple of things I have learnt from this experience. (Not just about plants)

If I left this plant in my warm cosy living room, it would not bloom. Ever. It needs to experience some quite harsh conditions: It needs to be cold and have more hours of darkness than light.

The second thing I learnt was this: Even though it bloomed almost a month late, it didn’t matter. It still bloomed.

So I think there are some fairly obvious life lessons, (and perhaps some slightly less obvious ones too) that we can take from this. Obviously some of this will be a bit cheesy, but what do you expect? So lets get to it…

In order to bloom, we often need to experience hardship

I think this is a fairly obvious statement. But do we really live in this way? Life is lovely when everything is easy., but not so much when we are facing hardship. From my own experience, and the lives of many others, I know it to be true: In order to bloom we often need to experience hardship.

For starters, it makes us more compassionate. How much better can we understand other peoples problems when we have faced a few of our own. And it often means we have a desire to help others who are now going through the same things we have.

Paul puts it like this in one of my favourite bible verses.

Not only so, but we  also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Romans 5:3-5

We grow through suffering, it even leads to us really know hope.

But when I talk about hardship, I’m not just thinking about suffering that we have no control over. In my mind, I also have the kind of hardship that we choose. If we want to get in shape we will pick up weights which feel uncomfortable at first, and then when it begins to feel comfortable, we will have to pick up an even heavier one. When you start to think about it, there are many hardships we will endure in order to achieve something.

In order to bloom we need to be willing to get uncomfortable at times. That may mean being willing to get up earlier, or go to a place which might feel difficult to us. It may mean giving away something that we hold onto tightly. The problem is, many of us (myself included) are addicted to being comfortable. We will do anything to avoid being being tired, or hungry or cold. But if we stay in our cozy living rooms, we may never have the opportunity to bloom.

The timeline doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.

I didn’t get any less joy from my cactus blooming, just because it happened a month late. I still think it looks as nice now as I would have done a month ago. Now it has bloomed, that extra month I was waiting doesn’t seem to matter at all.

Have you ever noticed this in your own life? You can wait and wait for something, for what seems like eternity. But once you get it that time you waited doesn’t matter at all, because its all behind you. You have that thing now.

You may have a timeline for your life in your mind. And maybe that time line isn’t going to plan. Especially this year!

When the pandemic hit, it felt like it was at the worst possible time. Not only had I just got engaged, but the children’s ministry I lead at church was growing. I was so excited about the future. I had plans for our wedding, and also for the children’s ministry. Our wedding was much smaller than we would have wanted and most of the plans for the ministry have been put on hold. But God has taught me so much during this time; mostly that it isn’t just about me and my timing, but that it is all in his hands. Taking our children’s ministry online has meant that some children who would struggle to get to church normally, have been able to join us, and then when we were able to return (for a time) we were able to experiment with really good all age ministry.

There have been times when I have compared myself to my friends, what they have achieved, and felt disappointed, because I hadn’t bloomed in the same way as them. Maybe you find yourself doing this. Maybe you had a plan for you life, and you feel like you are years behind schedule.

Do you think that my cactus sat on the windowsill in the spare room/ Tom’s office (which will hopefully be my office again at some point after the pandemic) worrying about when it will bloom. Worrying about why it hasn’t bloomed yet, and why all it’s Christmas cactus buddies have. Of course not! That would be completely ridiculous. Jesus tells us its just as ridiculous for us to worry.

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 

Matthew 6: 28-30

In this blog it may feel like I am trying to tell you two completely opposing things. Push out of your comfort zone in order to bloom, but relax if it’s not happening in the time frame that you want it to.

But perhaps these two things are not quite so opposed as they may seem. Perhaps the people who are most concerned about the future, are the very ones who don’t want to push out of the comfortable zone. Who don’t want to leave the living room.

So don’t be afraid of being uncomfortable, that is when God will stretch you, that’s when you will learn develop perseverance, character and hope, and also, don’t worry if you have to wait a longer than you thought you would.

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A Quick and Easy Guide to Choosing which Book of the Bible to Read

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Have you ever just sat there staring at your bible, wanting to read it, but not knowing where to start, then this is the post for you. There are so many different styles of writing in the bible, which is great, because we all like different things; but do you know what’s even greater?

They all point to Jesus!

This is my cheesey and slightly tongue in cheek guide to choosing which book of the bible to read next. Please don’t take it too seriously, but let it be a reason why you open your bible, and get reading. (I wrote this a few years ago, and to be honest, it does make me cringe a bit now, but it seems to have helped a number of people, being to only post on my old blog to go viral (by my very low standards) so I thought I would put it out there again.)

A Quick and Easy Guide to Choosing which Book of the Bible to Read

If sweet romantic stories tickle your fancy you will love reading Ruth, curled up on the sofa with a bar of dairy milk!

If you are always watching home improvement programmes like Grand Designs then be sure to read Nehemiah.

If you enjoy a bit of gore and violence then pick up the book of Judges.

If you like stories with a strong female lead then go ahead and read Esther.

If you always loved the problem pages of magazines then head over to James.

If you think it’s fun to read other peoples post then 1 and 2 Timothy will be perfect for you.

If adventure is your thing then you will love Exodus.

If you are into rules and law then check out Leviticus.

If stories set in the future float your boat then go to the back of the bible and read Revelation.

If poetry is more your thing then stick your finger in the middle of the bible (and slightly to the left) and pick up to Psalms.

If you prefer your poetry to be more emotional and angst filled then Ecclesiastes is the book for you.

If you just love family history then start at the beginning with Genesis.

If you enjoy underdog stories then 1 Samuel will be right up your street.

If you want little nuggets of wisdom then look into Proverbs.

If you like intense, edge of your seat, danger and suspence, then Daniel will be sure to thrill.

Finally if you want to read something life changing then the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) really are the thing for you.

The bible is an amazing book, there really is something for everyone. I guess God made us all different, so made His book just as diverse!

If you have more to add to the list feel free to share them in the comments section.