Encountering God's Cure, Part 1

In a crisis, human options don't work. That's the definition of a crisis. Dr. Tony Evans says, even though we may not like hard times, sometimes we need them. God uses crises for the purpose of letting you see God in a way you've never seen God before. 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. When our circumstances turn sour, we can't wait for them to change.

That's only natural. Today, Dr. Evans talks about an unnatural way to think of a crisis and the benefits it brings to your relationship with the Lord. Let's join him. A man rushed into the house in a panicked state. His wife looked at him and said, what's wrong? He said, we're in deep trouble. She said, what is it? He said, it's the car. She said, what's wrong with the car? He said, water. There's water in the carburetor.

It won't work. She said, what? He said, there's water in the carburetor and the car won't work.

She said, now you don't have a mechanical bone in your body. You know nothing about automobiles. How in the world do you know the problem with the car is water in the carburetor? In fact, where is the car? He said, it's in the swimming pool. So I guess there's water in the carburetor if it's in the swimming pool. See, his problem was a lot bigger than what he said. While it was true there was water in the carburetor, he was in a lot worse shape than that. A lot of us right now are more messed up than we look. We might simply say there's water in the carburetor when our whole life is in the pool.

But, you know, you can dress it up and fix it up and tweak it up and talk right and lay it out and make it look like just a little water in the carburetor. Today I want to talk to you about how to handle your crisis. Your crisis, God's cure. Anybody here in a crisis? A whole bunch of crisis, just crisis everywhere. How to deal with 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.

In other words, 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. There are family crises, there are financial crises, there are crises that have to do with family, there are 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 Aaron. 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 Aaron. 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 Aaron. 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. A crisis is like quicksand. It keeps sucking you deeper and deeper.

It doesn't get any better and no matter how you code it, try to fix it, try to solve it, it's still there. When the folks on the Titanic hit the iceberg, I can assure you it did not matter any longer how wealthy they were or what suite they were in. And when they got on the boat, that mattered because your money determined what suite, what level you were at, the rich people could stay up there and hobnob up there, the poor people were on lower decks, the workers were underneath, but when that thing hit the iceberg, all that was irrelevant.

There were only two kinds of people on that ship, the saved and the lost. Because when you hit an iceberg, a crisis, it overrules all the stuff that used to matter. That's how you know you're in a crisis. You can't fix it, you don't know anyone else who can fix it, and it is overriding the stuff that used to make you feel good about you. You can always pick it up when a person's in a crisis because when they talk about the things that used to matter, they now change the phrase to say it doesn't matter anymore. Why?

Because something else matters more. He was a leper, and he could do nothing to stop the suction. When I was in India, I saw modern-day leprosy firsthand. It's a little different than biblical leprosy in the New Testament, but the same devastating effect.

When my son was overseas, he went to a leper colony and ministered to lepers. Isolated, ostracized from the community because nobody could fix this problem. I am well aware that I am talking to many in crises. You've hidden it, you've concealed it, you've smiled over it, you've tried to ignore it, but when you get along with you, it's clear you're in a crisis. You can kind of pick up when a person's in a crisis though, because it affects their attitude. You just thought they were being mean when really you're getting the overflow of them being in a situation they can't handle. They're in a crisis.

You just thought they were just having depression. No, they're in a crisis and they don't know how to get out. So let me give you the secret, the answer for a crisis.

If you don't hear anything else, hear this. When you hit a crisis, a situation you can't fix and no one else can fix either, what you have just run smack dab into is a purposeful opportunity by God to give you a deeper experience with Him. Dr. Evans will explain how we can turn the bad news of a crisis into good news when he comes back in just a moment. But first I want to tell you about a brand new book Tony's written that goes hand in hand with the lessons and practical principles we've been learning about this week. The book is called Kingdom Encounters and in it Dr. Evans explores how our lives can be changed forever when we experience a connection with God that goes beyond simply knowing about Him.

Those connections often happen in the most unlikely times and places and this book can help you realize that even when you feel like everything's going wrong, you might be right where you need to be for a kingdom encounter with God. We're packaging this life-changing book along with all eight full-length messages from the Divine Encounter series on both CD and digital download, including material we don't have time to present on the air. You can get all of these resources as our gift when you make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching coming to this station and available around the world.

This special package will only be available for a few more days, so I encourage you to take advantage of this today. Go to tonyevans.org to make the arrangements where you'll also be able to download the messages to listen to immediately while we send the book and CD collection your way. Or give us a call day or night at 1-800-800-3222 where we have friendly team members standing by to assist you with your resource request. I'll have our contact information for you again after part two of today's lesson and this.

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Explore the kingdom anytime, anywhere. A crisis is always an opportunity by which God alone, because by definition nobody else can help, by which God alone can take you from where you are to the next level of where he wants you to be. That's the good news of a crisis.

Now, let me give you the bad news. The bad news is crises hurt. I mean, if it's a crisis, that means it's painful on a physical or emotional or psychological level.

It hurts. But the good news is God uses crises for the purpose of letting you see God in a way you've never seen God before. The story unfolds. Verse two 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 three 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. Watch this now.

It gets good here. Naaman goes to his master, which is the king of Aram, and says, verse four, 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're gonna miss something.

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 a 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, and 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 a lie 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? Let me explain something. When you are in a crisis, the whole point of the crisis is to put you in a situation that nobody but God can fix. So it doesn't matter how much money you collect when you're in a crisis. It doesn't matter how many kings you know when you're in a crisis because the whole point of a crisis is to show you that only God is God. See, that's the point of a crisis, to let you see God. So as long as you're accumulating human effort to fix a divinely orchestrated crisis, you are wasting your time and irritating other people because this king was irritated.

He tore his clothes, which was what you did when you were in anguish, when you were facing something you couldn't handle. So now he not only is in a crisis, he's creating a crisis in other folk. You know people in crisis don't want to be in a crisis by themselves.

Misery, love, company. That is the nature of a crisis. But that doesn't solve the problem. The prophet finds out that Naaman has been with the king and the king can't help him because it was a crisis, not a problem. Verse 8, and it happened when Elijah the man of God heard that the king of Israel had tore his clothes. He sent word to the king saying, why do you tear your clothes?

You don't have to lose your clothes over this man. Don't let other folk in crisis drive you nuts. Why are you going crazy too? Why their headache giving you a headache? Why their misery making you miserable too?

Why their sleeplessness keeping you from sleeping? Because you let them come to the wrong person, you. They went to the wrong, he went to the wrong person and because he went to the wrong person, he's messed up and the person he went to is messed up because a crisis, by definition, means there is no person who can fix it.

That's what the definition means. There is no human solution and it's on purpose because God wants to give you something bigger about Himself. Dr. Tony Evans, encouraging us to recognize and embrace God's presence in order to find the treasure in tough times. Explore more of this life-changing truth when you take advantage of that double resource package I mentioned earlier, Tony's brand new book, Kingdom Encounters, and his complete eight-message series, Divine Encounters. As a reminder, both the book and audio package on both CD and digital download can be yours with our thanks when you make a contribution to help us keep this listener-supported program coming your way. This is a limited-time offer. In fact, this special bundle of resources will only be available a few more days, so find out more right away. You can get all the details and make your request at tonyevans.org. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or call our 24-hour Resource Center at 1-800-800-3222, where a friendly team member is standing by ready to assist with your resource request 24 hours a day. Again, the number 1-800-800-3222. You know, we don't have to go out looking for problems in life. They find us. But tomorrow, Dr. Evans will explain the upside of downtimes as he talks about how we can experience God's cure in the midst of our crisis. I hope you'll join us. 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.