Hard Problems. Simple Tasks.

Have you ever studied for a test, but the questions weren’t what you thought they’d be? You thought for sure the teacher would ask about all these other things, but they didn’t. It may not have been a difficult test, but what they asked didn’t make sense. I’ve had God test me like that. I hear Him ask me to do something that doesn’t make sense, and then I question whether it was from God. “Surely He would ask me to do something else,” I think. Sometimes what He asks of us isn’t difficult. It just doesn’t make sense. 

In the early part of II Kings, God spoke through Elisha and asked some people to do things that didn’t make sense. A widow owed her husband’s debts and the collectors were coming for her sons. Elisha told her to borrow bottles and fill them with what little oil she had. The Shunemite woman’s son died and Elisha told his servant to go put his staff on the boy’s face. There was also a pot of stew that had been made with poisoned gourds in it. Elisha threw a handful of flour in it and it was fine.

One of the most famous though was a man named Namaan in chapter 5. He had leprosy and went to see Elisha. Elisha sent his servant out to tell him to dip in the Jordan river seven times and he’d be healed. Namaan left angry. In verse 13 one of his servants asked, “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? So shouldn’t you certainly obey him when he simply says, ‘Go and wash and be cured!’” (NLT) Namaan went and washed and was healed. 

In each of these cases, it didn’t make sense. I think that God asks us to do things different than we expect to test our obedience. God simply wants simple obedience. If He asked us to do something that gave us the answer, we would begin to think it was what we did. When the instructions have nothing to do with it and we obey, it can only be God who answered. Whatever God is asking for you, it may not be about the problem. It could be about your heart. Simply obey and let God do His thing.