Spiritual Leprosy

2Ki 5:1 MKJV
(1) And Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great and exalted man with his master, because Jehovah had given deliverance to Syria by him. He was also a mighty man, but a leper.

The King James Version says Naaman was a mighty man of valor, but a leper. To be mighty, or valorous, is to have great strength of will, resource, and fortitude. Naaman was a physical force to be reckoned with. But he had a problem. He had leprosy. Leprosy was a degenerative skin disease of which there was no cure. Naaman, though strong, was rotting away.

There are many spiritual giants that walk among us. They have great strength and resource. They are gifted and wealthy in ability, but they have this one hinderance. They are lepers. A spiritual leper is one who has open wounds. These wounds never seem to heal, and as sure as one finally appears to be healing, another opens. They are infectious. They tend to be bitter and carry unforgiveness and are often driven by these. Anyone who is around this type very much realizes that they, too, are beginning to feel wounds of the past. Leprosy is contagious!

What we know of Naaman, beyond his might, was that he was short-tempered and had a decided impression of how others should treat him. He was upset that Elisha sent his servant with instructions to wash in the Jordan river. Naaman had a chip on his shoulder, as most with leprosy do. Spiritual lepers tend to be angry people.

In the end, Naaman followed the advice of Elisha and was cleansed. His cure was to humble himself to the instruction of someone who did not even show him the respect he thought he deserved. He humbled himself to the advice of his own servant girl, as well. The cure for spiritual leprosy is humility. Place yourself in under the submission of a spiritual elder.



If you can identify someone with spiritual leprosy, the best thing you can do is to serve them as the servant girl did. She guided him to a place of spiritual authority where he had a decision to make. It was her love for her master that 'cleansed the leper'.

Got Passion?

2Ki 13:18-19 LITV
(18) And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them up. And he said to the king
of Israel, Strike the earth. And he struck three times, and stopped.
(19) And the man of God was angry with him, and said, By striking five or six
times, then you would have stricken Syria until it was finished; but now, you
shall strike Syria three times.

Elisha was the prophet who administered this test to Joash, King of Israel.
Don't you think this was confusing to the king? After all, there weren't very
good instructions to the test. As a great teacher said, the greatest tests
aren't the ones we know we are going through. The greatest tests are the ones
where we live seemingly insignificant moments out of our heart and we discover
what we're composed of in the process. Joash's problem was that he was a leader
without passion. Everything he did showed it, and everyone who followed him was
affected by it.

Could it have been that even if Joash had taken a mighty swing and had broken
all the arrows on the ground with one strike, the prophet might have said, "Just
as you broke the arrows you shall break all those who stand in your path." It
was a matter of passion. There was none.

We long for significance in the Kingdom of Heaven, but we are afraid to get
passionate for fear of public opinion. We value our reputations more than we
value the work of God (this is a form of idolatry). Is it any wonder we live
lives of meaningless influence, or none at all? If you were the Lord of the
Universe, how much would you entrust to 'you'?