Tag Archives: Devotions

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

Posted in Uncategorized, Unnamed Characters of the Bible by

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)

Posted in Uncategorized, Unnamed Characters of the Bible by
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.

What if Twenty Seventeen wasn’t Your Year?

Posted in Motivational by

These last couple of days I have noticed a lot of my Facebook friends have been sharing all the good things that have happened for them over the last year. All the things they have achieved, all the hopes fulfilled and new adventures. The kind of posts that social media was made for. The kind of posts that make you ninety percent happy and ten percent jealous. (Or was it the other way round?)

Maybe you are of the generation that still sends and receives Christmas letters full of tales of A-grades and picture perfect children. How can their lives just keep on getting better and better every year, without even the smallest trouble?

What if your twenty seventeen was nothing like that? What if your twenty seventeen was was just average, or a whole lot worse? What if you’re leaving twenty seventeen just as confused as you entered it?

Maybe you are scared to hope that this year will even be just okay.

What I am not going to say right now is that this is a new year, and it will be better. Because it might not be.

I’m not going to tell you that if you have the right attitude, eat the right food and wake up two hours earlier you will achieve everything you wanted to. Because even if this was true, I know it won’t last beyond the first page of a new calendar.

What I am going to tell you is that I am slowly starting to realise that this life is less and less about what we do, what we believe and more and more about be still and Knowing God.

Not just knowing about God, but actually truly knowing him. Life is about running into his arms and bowing at his feet and just being in his presence. And everything else flows from that.

Being a Christian doesn’t safeguard us from trials, it actually guarantees them. But when you Know God, you can find a way through even the hardest times, without becoming hard. You can face hopeless situations with out losing hope. You can be crushed by the pressures of this world but never break. You can be persecuted and abused, but you never forsaken. You can be struck down but never destroyed.

I am sure to a lot of outsiders it looks like I am entering into 2018 in much the same way as I entered 2017. That maybe it is taking me too long to move on from a painful marriage and out of my parents home. I know that some people will be confused by the decisions that I have made, but I can honestly say, for the first time in my adult life, that I know I am right where God wants me to be. My life may not be what I imagined it would be, but that doesn’t matter.

This kind of knowledge doesn’t come from anything other than learning to slow down and dwell in God’s presence.

He Didn’t Have to But He Did

Posted in Motivational, Uncategorized by

jacob-meyer-32135

He didn’t have to wake you up this morning. But he did.

He didn’t have to give you breath. But he did.

He didn’t have to die for you. But he did.

Some times we take these things in life for granted. As if God owes us life. As if he owes us forgiveness.

As. If. He. Owes. Us. Anything.

How self-absorbed? What kind of distorted thinking must we have to think that the God of the universe, the creator of everything, who holds it all in the palm of his hand, actually owes us a single thing.

And yet we go through everyday, acting as if we deserve life, as if we derve forgivenss, as if we deserve any kind of blessing.

How dare we. How can we forget the chasm that exists between us and God. The cost of death that was required to bridge that gap between us and him.

We should be living every single second of every single day filled with wonder that God would even bother to remember our names. Let alone love us. Let alone send his Son to die for us. Because of us.

How dare we forget to scream to the whole world about what God has done for us. When we really didn’t deserve any of it. When a girl will shout about a boy buying her a few cheap flowers that will die in a couple of days. Why are we silent about the God who did so much more for us?

How can we possibly be so preoccupied by the pointless inane things of this world instead of getting down on our knees and worshipping him.

God didn’t have to save you. He doesn’t have to keep on blessing you. But he does. Because of who he is.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

 

 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

4 Reasons Why We Don’t Obey God

Posted in Motivational, Uncategorized by

 

IMG_1134This morning, as I was waking up, I felt God ask me a question: “If I asked you to build an ark, would you?” If God asked me to do something completely ridiculous would I dare to do it. In that moment, I honestly said… no.

And that one sentence has been bothering me all day.

Although I know that God cares about me, that his plans for me are the best, even though I know that he wouldn’t ask me to do something crazy without a great reason, my first instinct was still to say no. Continue reading →