Stop Focusing On Your Buts Series

So Naaman was going to die and he knew that he needed help and verses 2-8 tells us of a wonderful Israeli girl who had been captured and having a heart like Christ she wanted to help one of her captors and she told her boss that if Naaman would just go see the prophet Elisha, he will be able to cure Naaman’s leprosy. Well Naaman goes and asks the king if it is okay for him to go and see Elisha for help with this leprosy and the King of Aram in verse 5 says By all means go and so Naaman goes to meet with Elisha.

So the first thing that we see is that it is okay to be proud without being prideful and the second thing I want us to see today is that Pride

II: The Dangers Pride Can Have On Our Lives

So Naaman has an opportunity to be freed from this deathly disease and he proceeds to head to Elisha to ask for a cure and in verse 9 Naaman arrives at the door of the house and is met there by one of Elisha’s servants who tells him what he must do. Verse 10 says “Go wash yourself 7 times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.

Now I don’t know about you but that sounds like a pretty good dose of medicine. All Naaman has to do is take a bath in the Jordan river and he will be cleansed and healed. So what’s the problem?

The problem is pride. Remember pride is being arrogant thinking you are better than someone else. And that is what Naaman is feeling right now. He has a solution an easy solution to his deadly disease and instead of just doing what the doctor ordered, Naaman allows pride to get in the way. How? Instead of simply doing what the messenger of Elisha tells him to do, Naaman proceeds to get angry and puff his chest out and start fussing because Elisha did not come out to tell him what to do. Back in his country Naaman was a powerful person, people listened to him they respected him they did what he asked and when Elisah does not come out to talk to Naaman he gets ticked off.

And not only that Naaman was incensed that Elisah was sending him away to go and get healed by himself. Naaman did not want that cure. Naaman did not want to be healed that way. Notice how he wanted to be healed. In verse 11 Naaman says I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. You see what the problem is with pride. Did Naaman really want a healing or did he want a show. Naaman was expecting to be treated as royalty. He was expecting Elisha to come out and to be a Benny Hinn and put on a big show and smack him upside the head and he would fall down and be healed. He wanted it to be flashy and all God was trying to do was make it simple.

That’s the danger with pride. When we get full of pride we want to boast brag. We want people to know that we are the big shots. And pride can be dangerous because we can get so cocky that we begin to expect God to work in our lives in a powerful display of power. But that’s not how God works. God works in our lives in the way and manner that he chooses. There is another story in Kings that talks about the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 18. God came to Elijah not in a powerful wind, not in a powerful earthquake, not in a powerful fire but through a still small voice in a gentle whisper. Be willing to allow God to work in His way and in His time and not in ours or we will be in trouble. We must not be like Naaman and expect things to happen exactly like we want them too. Because if we are not careful our pride can cause us to miss out on what God wants to do in our lives. Let God work in the manner that God wants to work.