Encountering God's Cure, Part 2

A crisis is like quicksand. It keeps sucking you deeper and deeper. Dr. Tony Evans says relying on our own strength in a disaster is simply a bad idea.

The harder you work to get out of it, the faster you are going underneath it. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of The Urban Alternative. We don't have to go out looking for problems in life. They find us. But today Dr. Evans explains the upside of downtimes as he talks about how we can experience God's cure in the midst of our crisis.

Let's join him. Today I want to talk to you about how to handle your crisis. First of all, let's talk about the anatomy of a crisis. What is a crisis? A crisis is a situation in your life you can't fix. Okay, to put it right there on the table, you're in a crisis if you have a situation in your life you can't fix. Not only can you not fix it, you don't know anybody else who can fix it.

There is no solution in sight, either from you or from somebody else to fix what's wrong. Now crises come in all shapes, all forms, all sizes. They come a lot of different ways. They're family crises. They're financial crises. They're crises that have to do with family.

They're spiritual crises. But the thing that makes a crisis a crisis is you can't fix it, you don't know anybody else who can fix it. If you can fix it and you know somebody else who can fix it, that's a problem. That's not a crisis. A crisis is when the problem gets so bad.

You can't fix it and apparently nobody else can because if they could it would have been fixed a long time ago. Life is full of crises. We're introduced to a man in chapter 5 of 2 Kings who has a crisis. His name is Naaman.

Let's learn about Naaman and learn how God wants to cure your crisis. It says now Naaman was the captain of the army of the king of Aram. So the first thing we learn about Naaman is he has rank. He's a captain. He has climbed the ladder of professional success.

Naaman has achieved. He's worked his way up so that now he is the captain of the army. He has now positional clout in the army of Aram. He's a force to be reckoned with.

He sits in the executive chair. It goes on to say he was a great man with his master and highly respected. Naaman not only had rank, he had reputation. His master above him called him a great man and the people beneath him highly respected him. So when you look down at him, he was great. When you look up at him, he was great. Naaman is a great man.

He has a great reputation. We're told something else about Naaman. It says through him the Lord gave victory to Aram. He had religion. It's a religious man, because the Lord felt free to work through this man to give victory to his army. So on some level, I don't know whether he went to church regularly, had devotions daily, that's not given to us, but what we are told is God worked through him.

So there was some sort of religious connection. He had things going for him. He had rank, reputation, religion. We're told finally he's a valiant warrior. I mean, this man had it all working for him. You would call him a success. I mean, when you become president of the company, you don't have to worry about money anymore.

Everybody looks at you, knows your name, bows when you come by, highly respected. In church, every time the door opens, you figure his life must be together. The last line in the verse messes things up. It says, but. Don't you wish life didn't have any buts in it? Anybody live anybody with people who always got but at the end of a clause? You afraid to get excited when they're excited because you know they're gonna say but.

Something's gonna come up that's gonna take that conversation downhill fast. He had rank, reputation, religion. He is a valiant warrior, but. He was a leper. This man had everything going for him, but he was a leper, which meant that he had a terminal disease for which there was no cure, for which he became isolated, and you know when you're in a crisis, that can mess up all the good stuff going for you. When it's a crisis that nobody can fix. You can have the world at your hand, but when that but shows up, when that crisis shows up, it undermines everything.

Your life can be on target. You go to the doctor, get one diagnosis, and it doesn't matter that you got the promotion anymore, and it doesn't matter that you got the house, you got the car, because you're in a crisis. You always know when you're in a crisis because the things that used to matter don't matter as much.

When you're in a show enough crisis. Now if you've got a problem, see if you find out you got a headache, that's not gonna shake up your world. You find out you got a brain tumor, that will change your world, because that's a crisis.

A headache is a problem. The author wants us to know this man faced a crisis. The story unfolds. Verse 2 says that there was a little slave girl who was captured from Israel and was waiting on Naaman's wife. She was an attendant to Naaman's wife. She comes to her mistress in verse 3 and says, you know, when I was back in Israel, there was a prophet, and that prophet could heal leprosy.

I think your husband, my boss, Naaman, ought to go see him, because I believe he could solve this problem. Now follow me now. Naaman is captain. In his invasions, he's captured a little servant girl, Jewish, from Israel. She happened to know about Elijah back home. She tells Naaman's wife back home, there's a guy who can help.

Naaman's wife tells him. When you're in a crisis, even slave girls make sense. See, when you're not in a crisis, you don't need to listen to folk inferior to you.

When you're not in the crisis, you can hang out with folk who make the money that you make, wear the clothes that you wear, drive the cars that you drive, hang out in the places that you go, but I don't know if you've ever seen somebody reduced by a crisis, because then all of a sudden, the nobodies become somebodies if they can help you. Here we got a nobody, a no-name, a slave girl. She says, I know somebody. She says, his wife says, he says, who? What's his name?

Where he lives. She says, back in Israel there's a prophet. So, watch this now.

This gets good here. Naaman goes to his master, which is the king of Aram, and says, verse 4, I got a little slave girl, told me that there's a man out there that can heal me. Now, the master's no dummy. He knows Naaman wins wars, so this is the kind of guy you want to keep alive and healthy and well. So he comes up with a plan. The king of Aram said, go now and I will send the letter to the king of Israel, and he departed and took with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, ten changes of clothes, and he brought the letter to the king of Israel saying, and now as this letter comes to you, behold I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may cure him of his leprosy. Now, if you don't pay attention, you gonna miss something.

Because you gotta pay attention. The girl said, the slave girl, I know a prophet back in Israel that can solve your problem. He goes and tells the king, the slave girl knows the prophet, back in Israel can solve my problem. King says, whoa, that's good for us if you can get healed. The king then collects money and sends Naaman to the king of Israel. Here's my man, here's my money, fix him.

Anybody hear something wrong there? Slave girlfriend said, there is a prophet back in Israel that can fix this. But see, the king only deals with kings, he don't deal with prophets. So he collects money to buy a solution. He wants to pay another king. Mr. Big Stuff wants to talk to Mr. Big Stuff, figuring that if enough money crosses the table, we can fix this. Which is easy to do when it's not your crisis.

Everybody's got an idea how to fix you and your crisis. The slave girl said, I know a prophet in Israel who can solve this problem. But the king wanted Naaman to do what many of us try to do when we're in a crisis, and that is marry the sacred with the secular to come up with a compromised solution. We want enough of God to make sure he's in the vicinity, but we want stuff we're familiar with. Money and kings, clout, influence to solve our problem.

Well, they bring the money and they bring the influence to the king. When the king of Israel, verse 7, read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am I God? Do I look like God to you?

Do we look like Siamese twins? Am I God to kill and make alive that this man is sending word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? But consider now and see how he is seeking a quarrel against me. He says, you got to be kidding or crazy or both. You're sending money for me to cure your man.

Do I look like God to you? Dr. Evans will have more on where to find the cure in your crisis when he comes back in just a moment. First though, I wanted to be sure to let you know that Tony has written the perfect companion book to what we've been hearing about today. It's called Kingdom Encounters, and it explores how you can have the same kind of one-on-one experiences with God that we read about in the lives of people like Moses, Daniel, Abraham, and others. We want to help you learn how to set your faith on fire and keep it burning, so we're making available both the book and digital and CD copies of all eight full-length messages from his current Divine Encounter series, including material we won't have time to share on the radio. You can get them all as our thank-you gift when you make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching coming your way on this station. This special double offer runs out on Monday, so be sure to visit tonyevans.org right away to make the arrangements. Or call our 24-hour Resource Center at 1-800-800-3222, where team members are standing by to help you.

That's 1-800-800-3222. We'll get back to our teaching time right after this. If you're like most Christians, there are people in your life who know you but may not know Jesus. You really want to do something about that, but don't feel equipped to share your faith effectively. In other words, maybe if you knew more, you could do more.

Well, that's where the Tony Evans Training Center comes in. It's an online Bible school with classes that will take you deep into the most important core concepts of the faith. You can start with our free introductory course on evangelism, then move on to subjects like spiritual warfare, marriage building, maturing in the faith, and many more. The content is challenging, but you can move through it at your own pace anytime you're online. There's also lots of custom content from Tony and an online forum where you can get your specific questions answered. Go to tonyevanstraining.org and start your free intro course today.

The Tony Evans Training Center, where you can explore the kingdom anytime, anywhere. You see, you need to make sure when you're in a crisis, you go into the right person to help you. If you have a toothache, don't go to a psychiatrist.

They don't work on that. You see, you go into the wrong person just because they got docked in front of me. I was at the airport one day and this lady fainted. She was going through something. She was in a crisis. At the same time, she's going through her crisis, over the loudspeaker, Dr. Tony Evans, will you pick up the phone right away?

All right. The phone was right there where the crisis was taking place, so I pick up the phone. I say, Dr. Evans here. They hear me, who are working on the lady, say, Dr. Evans here.

They try to get me off the phone to go over to the lady. I say, no, no, you don't understand. I'm not that kind of doctor. My doctor's in theology, not medical science.

I can't help you. You come to the wrong place. See, the worst thing in the world is to have one kind of doctorate, but think you have another kind.

Because a lot of us try to be specialists of stuff we don't know nothing about. Do you know some of you are in situations only God can fix? Stand on the phone all night, not gonna fix it. Stand up all night, worrying about it, not gonna fix it, because it's a crisis. That's the nature of a crisis. You got to know who you're looking to for a delivery when you're in a crisis.

When you're in a crisis, don't trust cheap carriers, because it won't show up in time. When you're in a sure enough crisis, that is a call to see God work at a much deeper level. Naaman came, watch verse 9, I like this verse 9, Naaman came with his horses, his chariots, and stood at the doorway of the house of Elijah. Verse 10 says, and Elijah sent a messenger to him. Go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored to you and you shall be clean.

When you want a cure for a crisis, it's in your best interest to have the right attitude. It says in verse 11, but Naaman was furious and went away and said, Behold, I thought he would surely come out to me and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. How dare him not come to the door himself.

Now, I hope you follow Naaman's two problems here. First problem is his emotions. Says he was furious. That's how he felt. His anger overruled the prophet's words.

Prophet said, God said, you better hang on down to the Jordan and dip seven times so you can get this thing fixed. But he didn't feel like it. He was angry.

He was more worried about his reputation. And then the second problem was, he said, I thought. Let me tell you something about a crisis. God never uses a singular method to solve a problem except the problem of sin.

That's the blood of Christ. Don't look to how God addressed my crisis to determine how he's going to address yours. Don't say, I thought he did for you.

No, no. God is letting me have a new experience with him that's gonna be mine. He's gonna let you have a new experience with him that's gonna be yours and the two may not be the same. Don't put God in your human box. Okay, so you mad at God because he's taking too long.

He's not doing it like you're supposed to do it. Okay, go ahead and get it all out. So the verse 14 says, He went down and dipped himself seven times into Jordan. He did according to the word of the man of God, meaning according to God's Word. He did what God said do and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a child and he was clean. So let me tell you what this looks like now.

God did two things for the man and you need to know about both of them. He fixed his problem. No more leprosy. That's good enough, right? Isn't that what you want in a crisis?

Fix what's broken. He not only fixed the problem of the cancerous or leprous skin so that it stopped being that way. That's good enough, but you know it's God when he gives you more than you ask for. He says stop my leprosy. When he fully obeyed, God not only stopped his leprosy but gave him new skin. But watch this, not new adult skin because he was an adult. It says he gave him the skin of a little baby. Have you ever felt a little baby skin?

Brand new skin, fresh out of the womb skin, not soft, not hard and crusty, full of callous skin to get by with, but nice baby talcum powder kind of skin. What Joel 2 says is when God comes through in a crisis, he'll restore to you the years that the locusts have taken away. He'll give you back what you lost. You know it's God when he not only answers your prayer but he comes through, reaches back, takes those years that you drifted and gives you blessing of those years as well. Only God can do that.

That's why in a crisis you want to hear from God. In just a moment, Dr. Evans will come back with an important thought to close our message for today. First though, don't forget to take advantage of that special offer I mentioned earlier. You'll get all eight full-length messages in Tony's current series, Divine Encounters, along with that insightful and life-changing companion book, Kingdom Encounters. They're both yours with our thanks when you make a contribution to help us continue presenting this program every day. But this package is only available through this coming Monday, so you need to make the arrangements right away. Be sure to visit TonyEvans.org today or call 1-800-800-3222 to get the details and make your request. Our Resource Center never closes, and again that number 1-800-800-3222 or online at TonyEvans.org. Words like impossible or incurable don't apply when God is part of the equation, but Dr. Evans says seeing miracles happen is in some ways up to us.

On Monday he'll share the stories of two outstanding women from the Bible. Right now though, he's back with this closing thought for today. When you go to the doctor, you're saying a number of things. Number one, you're saying, I'm hurting, something is wrong. The second thing is you're saying, I can't fix it, because if you could fix it, you would fix it.

We have a lot across the count of Christians. They want to live their lives pulling out their own products, treating a crisis with problem medicine, taking aspirin to cure. What God wants you to realize is a crisis because He wants to let you see you can't fix it. If God had you in a crisis and is telling you He wants to operate on you, He also wants you to know He loves you while He operates. The greatest crisis of all is to die in your sin without a relationship with Jesus Christ when all God has asked you to do is dip in the blood. The blood will cleanse you of all of your sins. The blood will forgive you. The blood will save you. But some people think that's too easy.

So they spend their lives going to church, trying to live right, trying to keep the Ten Commandments, trying to give them money when all they got to do is take a dip in the precious blood of Jesus Christ. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.