In the 55th chapter of Isaiah it says that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. And so it was with Naaman. In the first place, he thought a good big doctor’s fee would do it all, and settle everything up. And besides that there was another thing he thought; he thought going to the king with his letters of introduction would do it. Yes, those were Naaman’s first thoughts. I thought. Exactly so. He turned away in rage and disappointment. He thought the prophet would have come out to him very humble and very subservient, and
BID HIM DO SOME GREAT THINGS.
Instead of that, Elisha, who was perhaps busy writing, did not even come to the door or the window. He merely sent out the message:
“Tell him to dip seven times in the Jordan.”
And away went Naaman, saying, I thought, I thought, I thought.
I have heard that tale so often that I am tired of it. Give it up, and take God’s words, God’s thoughts, God’s ways. I never yet knew a man converted just in the time and manner he expected to be. I have heard people say, “Well, if ever I am converted, it won’t be in a Methodist church; you won’t catch me there.” I never knew a man say that but, at last, if converted at all, it was in a Methodist church.
In Scotland a man was converted at one of our meetings—an employer. He was very anxious that all his employees should be reached, and he used to send them one by one to the meetings. But there was one man that wouldn’t come. We are all more or less troubled with stubbornness; and the moment this man found that his employer wanted him to go to the meetings he made up his mind he wouldn’t go. If he was going to be converted, he said, he was going to be converted by some ordained minister; he was not going to any meeting that was conducted by Americans that were not ordained. He believed in conversion, but he was going to be
CONVERTED THE REGULAR WAY.
He believed in the regular Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and that was the place for him to be converted.
The employer tried every way he could to get him to attend the meetings, but he wouldn’t come.