What started as formal conversation quickly became a discipleship relationship.
The problem here is that this places an emphasis on what the single people are doing, not on what God is doing. We’re not all single by choice or as a result of our choices. Sometimes this is just how God chooses to do things. Only He knows why. So we imply that we can be the master of our circumstances in the same breath that we tell people to believe God for what only He can do. It’s confusing.
Scripture teaches us about contentment (Philippians 4). But it also tells us to keep asking God for things (Luke 11). Both things can be true. We can be content even while we are unsatisfied. Let’s take a look at a story that blows my mind… The Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4. Long scripture passage alert… but totally worth it.
Here’s the set up: Elisha is a prophet of God and he (along with his servant Gehazi) strikes up a relationship with this woman from Shunem. She and her husband care for the man of God – they built an upper room for him to stay in when he travels through their town. I’ll let scripture take it from here.
The problem here is that this places an emphasis on what people are doing, not on what God is doing.
14 Later Elisha asked Gehazi, “What can we do for her?”
Gehazi replied, “She doesn’t have a son, and her husband is an old man.”
15 “Call her back again,” Elisha told him. When the woman returned, Elisha said to her as she stood in the doorway, 16 “Next year at this time you will be holding a son in your arms!”
“No, my lord!” she cried. “O man of God, don’t deceive me and get my hopes up like that.”
17 But sure enough, the woman soon became pregnant. And at that time the following year she had a son, just as Elisha had said.
18 One day when her child was older, he went out to help his father, who was working with the harvesters. 19 Suddenly he cried out, “My head hurts! My head hurts!”
His father said to one of the servants, “Carry him home to his mother.”
20 So the servant took him home, and his mother held him on her lap. But around noontime he died. 21 She carried him up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and left him there. 22 She sent a message to her husband: “Send one of the servants and a donkey so that I can hurry to the man of God and come right back.”
We imply that we can be the master of our circumstances in the same breath that we tell people to believe God for what only He can do.
It’s confusing.
25 As she approached the man of God at Mount Carmel, Elisha saw her in the distance. He said to Gehazi, “Look, the woman from Shunem is coming. 26 Run out to meet her and ask her, ‘Is everything all right with you, your husband, and your child?’”
“Yes,” the woman told Gehazi, “everything is fine.”
27 But when she came to the man of God at the mountain, she fell to the ground before him and caught hold of his feet. Gehazi began to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone. She is deeply troubled, but the Lord has not told me what it is.”
28 Then she said, “Did I ask you for a son, my lord? And didn’t I say, ‘Don’t deceive me and get my hopes up’?”
29 Then Elisha said to Gehazi, “Get ready to travel; take my staff and go! Don’t talk to anyone along the way. Go quickly and lay the staff on the child’s face.”
30 But the boy’s mother said, “As surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, I won’t go home unless you go with me.” So Elisha returned with her.
Content, but not satisfied.
31 Gehazi hurried on ahead and laid the staff on the child’s face, but nothing happened. There was no sign of life. He returned to meet Elisha and told him, “The child is still dead.”
32 When Elisha arrived, the child was indeed dead, lying there on the prophet’s bed. 33 He went in alone and shut the door behind him and prayed to the Lord. 34 Then he lay down on the child’s body, placing his mouth on the child’s mouth, his eyes on the child’s eyes, and his hands on the child’s hands. And as he stretched out on him, the child’s body began to grow warm again! 35 Elisha got up, walked back and forth across the room once, and then stretched himself out again on the child. This time the boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes!
2 Kings 4:14-22, 25-35 NLT
I know this is a large chunk of scripture. Believe it or not, I actually did trim it down. It so perfectly illustrates what I wish we understood: You can be content and not be satisfied.
We can live in a state of shalom even as we keep asking.
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