WALK IT OUT!

 

  



 
I dearly love the narratives of the Old Testament.  The Holy Spirit is able to give this fallible, finite, and sometimes floundering Christ follower, a Truth that seems to be so very practical for what might be going on in my life right now.  I so needed the Shunammite woman's statement of faith, "It is well/It will be well" whether she knew she had faith or not!

The rest of the story: She gets to Elisha and Gehazi tries to push her away, but not to be deterred from her mission, she takes hold of Elisha's feet.  She reminds him that she asked for a son, a son was given, and her interesting question,  didn't I tell you, "Don't raise my hopes?"  Gehazi is instructed to take Elisha's staff and lay the staff on the boy's face.  She demands that Elisha go with her also.  Gehazi gets to the home first...again, 25 miles!  He does what he has been instructed and runs back to meet Elisha to tell him, "The boy has not awakened." Elisha and the woman get to the home.  He goes into the room where the young man is, closes the door behind him and PRAYS.  He gets up from PRAYER, he lays upon the boy's lifeless body, and places his mouth on the young man's mouth, and then places his hands on the lifeless man's hands..."the boy's body grew warm."  Elisha gets up and paces in the room, and gets back on top of the boy's body.  "The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes."  Gehazi brings the woman into the room, and Elisha gives the boy, alive, back to the woman.  Her response:  She fell at his feet and bowed to the ground.  The narrative closes with the mother taking her son and leaving the room.  No other responses spoken that are in the record.

I come away from this narrative fully loving the reminder that my GOD IS ABLE. I know He will and can perform what delights Him and is best for me.  Sometimes the faith that He wants to  bring out of our lives is allowing us to walk through the circumstance with the comfort and victory that the Spirit of God affords us. Granted, taking away the circumstance which brings challenges is my more preferred method, however 2 Corinthians 1:9b, "But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead."  HIS desire is that I walk the circumstance OUT faithfully and be prepared to encourage someone else who is walking in a challenge.  HE wastes no pain, no joy, or difficulty that you or I experience.  Also, I am reminded in 2 Timothy 2:2, as an older woman in the Lord, I am to share with someone else what HE has entrusted me to learn and in turn, that one will share with another.  HE is faithful!  Ever learning! In process, STILL! #IHAVETHREESONS