The Old Testament scriptures are full of stories of God’s faithful activity in the world, often unseen behind the scenes until the last moment. One such story strikingly illustrates this, and it gives the people of God such great hope because they worship the same God - who never changes. His faithfulness never wavers.
The king of Aram (2 Kings 6) was at war with Israel, but the “war” wasn’t going very well. In fact, the king of Aram couldn’t even get started. After many weeks, his army had fired narry a shot, and he was getting pretty steamed up about it. He would set an ambush for the Israeli army but, time and again, the King Israel had found out about it and had avoided them all. In the end, the “war” never happened. Not really.
The King of Aram was frustrated and furious. He summoned his senior officers and wanted to know if there was a traitor in their midst, who was tipping off the King of Israel. They all denied it, of course. But one officer says, “Umm, I think the problem is Elisha, the prophet. He can hear what you’re saying in your bedroom.” Aram seethes at this and demands to know where Elisha is. They discover that Elisha is in Dothan, in the northern hills of Samaria. The Arameans come by night and surround Dothan – Elisha was going to be taken out.
Elisha is fast asleep. Near dawn his servant, Gehazi, got up and went to the window and looked out at the sunrise. He was panic-stricken! Aram’s army - soldiers, horses and chariots – had surrounded the small city. He shouts to awaken Elisha, “My lord, what are we going to do!?” Elisha yawns and sleepily says, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Gehazi doesn’t understand, he is terrified. Then this …
2 Kings 6:17 (NIV)
17 And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
The Arameans couldn’t see God’s army and, oblivious, began to advance. Elisha prayed again that the Arameans would be struck “blind”. Suddenly, the enemy didn’t know what to do. The “war” was over. There’s more to the story, of course. But here is the message of hope I sense God wants His people to lay hold of right now in these difficult days.
Gehazi could only see the facts as pertained to the physical realities – the soldiers, horses and chariots, and how overwhelming a threat they posed. That’s all he could see. And he was scared.
On the other hand, Elisha’s perception and, therefore his response, was shaped by his capacity to see what Gehazi could not. While Gehazi no doubt professed trust in Yahweh, he wasn’t acting like it. In fact, he modelled how all Israel was behaving – they had no sense in their spirit that God could, or would, be actively working for their good in a crisis. Missiologist, Alan Roxburgh, commenting on the North American Church, says “We have come to see our sources of hope everywhere except in the reality of God’s presence and activity in the world. We might have claimed to be God’s people, but …. on some level we think life can be lived without God …” The point being that despite our profession of faith in God – even for regular worshippers - deep in our souls somewhere our real convictions (as opposed to our stated convictions) form our attitudes and drive our responses - especially in a crisis. I am convinced that a similar virus has infected much of the Australian church, too. We behave more like Gehazi and slip into panic mode, abandoning our renewed mind and losing our poise. Not a great witness, is it? The end result of that misshapen mindset is that we think we have to fix our problems ourselves because all we see are the facts as pertaining to the physical realities – nothing more – and the facts overwhelm us. This is a consequence of us not being fully able to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God (Rom. 12:1). Yet, one of the key implications of presenting our bodies in this way, in complete surrender to God, is that we abandon ourselves to His faithfulness – and our problems and challenges are then owned by Him. Then, with the renewed mind we see the greater God-reality around us, as Elisha did. We see that “those who are with us, are way more than those who are with them” – and this is not just about greater numerical strength, either! The apostle John put it this way:
1 John 4:4-6 (NIV)
4 “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 [But] We are from God, …”
So here we are having endured so much during this COVID-plagued last two years; and there are looming challenges and problems as we start the regathering of our congregations to worship and ministry again. All kinds of challenges have surrounded us from logistics, to depleted finances, to restrictions and challenges to our unity as the body of Christ. They look overwhelming from a worldly viewpoint! We can default to a terrified Gehazi view of reality, or we can, like Elisha, having abandoned ourselves to God’s utter faithfulness as living sacrifices, and having our minds constantly renewed, know with utter confidence that, behind the scenes, He has never stopped working for our good. And that, He is here now with us in the crisis.
Of course, this is no crisis for Him - and so, it shouldn’t be for us!
You are deeply loved.
Ps Milton
Sources: Alan Roxburgh, “Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World.”