We all want healing, but most of us want healing on our own terms.

Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall recounts an ancient story about a proud Syrian commander who is stricken with leprosy and desperate for a cure.

Chuck reminds us that Naiman's illness and his stubborn resistance to God's plan for healing

mirrors the way that we often treat the gospel. This isn't just a story about physical disease.

It's about our sin-sick souls and the humble obedience required for cleansing.

What we have in 2 Kings 5 is a story of a miracle.

And the main character in the story is a man named Neiman, N-A-M-A-M-A-N, who's mentioned in verse one,

Neiman, who was a Syrian.

Understand now, he is an unsaved Syrian military officer who serves the king of Syria named Ben Hadad, who isn't mentioned in this account,

but is mentioned elsewhere in the book of kings. But he was a leper. We're not told every detail of what he said or what he did,

but out of the blue, and this is

just the way God works, there's a little servant girl that comes across his path.

Look at verse two.

The Syrians had gone out in bands and had taken captive, a little girl from the land

of Israel.

And she waited on Neiman's wife.

Isn't that interesting how these lives criss-cross and dovetail?

And she said one day to her mistress,

I wish that my master were with the prophet who was in Samaria.

The prophet is Elisha.

He would cure him of his leprosy.

You wonder if Nehaman was open to it?

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