Priscilla Shirer - God Can Restore Your Circumstances
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Summary
Priscilla Shirer delivers a powerful message from 2 Kings 5 about Naaman the leper and the unnamed Israelite captive girl, emphasizing that hidden «leprosy"—spiritual, emotional, or relational ailments—often overshadows outward success. Through personal stories, including Rashida’s journey from corporate ambition to meaningful babysitting and her tragic death, Shirer encourages women feeling «cheated» by life’s detours to recognize they’ve been «chosen» by God for divine purpose in their current placement. The call is to expose hidden struggles for healing and embrace uncomfortable seasons as opportunities to point others to God.
Excited to Hear from God
I love you, too. And I’m so thrilled to be with you because I’m excited. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat to see what God wants to say to us tonight. I love how He prepares one message, but by His Spirit, divides it up 3,000 ways so that every person under the sound of my voice tonight will hear a word that has been handcrafted from heaven for you. I believe that. I believe that for myself as well.
Standing for God’s Word
So, I’m going to pray for us. But before I do, while you are standing, I just want to read God’s Word to you. If you actually still, you know, use a Bible with paper pages, grab it. Old school, or your iPhone, your iPad, any manner of device, just feel free to grab that, or I think they’re going to put it up on the screen.
I want to read God’s Word to you while you are standing because we are in a house of God where I know the leadership at this church treasures the Word of God. I pray that if this is not your home church, you go to a church where the leadership, the congregation treasures the Word of God, that it is God speaking to us.
Every single time we open up the scriptures, we ought to expect to feel the warm breath of God brushing across our cheeks as He speaks a present word over our lives. It’s God talking to us.
Scripture Reading
And every now and then, you ought to, even when you’re by yourself, make yourself stand up. Because if kings and queens, if presidents walked into the room,
So, I’m going to read God’s Word to you. I’m going to read one verse from Luke chapter 4. Then we’re going to hop back to the Old Testament, where we’re going to camp out in 2 Kings chapter 5 for the rest of the evening. Is that all right?
Luke chapter 4, verse 27, says this. Jesus is speaking. He says, «There were many lepers in Israel at the time when Elijah the prophet lived, but none of them were cleansed. Only Naaman the Syrian.»
Listen to that again. There were a whole lot of people who had issues in Israel during the time of Elijah the prophet, but none of them was cleansed. Only Naaman. And he wasn’t even in the church; he was a Syrian.
2 Kings 5
Second Kings chapter 5, I’m going to read verses 1 through 3. Then I’m going to read verses 10 and 14.
Verse one says, «Now Naaman, here’s the guy. He’s captain of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man with his master, highly respected because by him, the Lord had given victory to Aram. By the way, Aram is Syria. The man was also a very valiant warrior. But doggone it, he was a leper.»
Now the Syrians, the Arameans, had gone out in bands at one point. They had taken captive this little girl from the land of Israel, and she came back as a captive to Syria, and she was the maidservant. She waited on Naaman’s wife.
Verse three says, «She said to her mistress one day as she watched her leprous master walking around the house, 'I wish that my master were with the prophet. I know this guy who’s in Samaria; his name is Elijah. Man, I wish he were with him because then he would be cured of his leprosy.'»
Verse 10. So Elijah sends out a messenger to Naaman when Naaman finally goes to see him, and he says, «Go and wash in the Jordan seven times. Your flesh will be restored to you, and you shall be clean.»
Verse 14. So Naaman, after some poking and prodding, goes down. He dips himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God. His flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was made whole.
Opening Prayer
Lord Jesus, I thank you for your Word. I thank you, Father, that it is living, that it is active, and that it is sharper than any two-edged sword.
Lord, I pray that in these few moments that we will spend together over your Word, the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart will be acceptable to you.
Father, I pray that any assignment that the enemy may have tonight, either to keep me from having clarity of thought and clarity of words, or to keep ears veiled so that they cannot hear what the Spirit would say, I pray that any assignment would be canceled in Jesus' name and by His blood that has been shed on Calvary.
Speak, Lord. We came for a word tonight. We’re glad to see each other, but we didn’t come to see each other. We came to see you. And so, Father, we’re on the edge of our seats. Speak. Your daughters are listening in Jesus' name. All God’s women said, «Amen.» Amen. Amen. Amen.
You may take your seats.
Rashida’s Story
There’s a girl named Rashida. Rashida has been a member of our church for a very, very long time, but I don’t really know her as much from church as I do from different families that she babysat for.
She was a beautiful 35-year-old woman, vivacious in personality, engaged as much as she could be in church life, and a single woman who had a lot of time on her hands, and she loved investing that time into young people. She enjoyed babysitting.
That’s really where I got to know her. She babysat for several members of my family. My sister, who has five children, would often call on Rashida to come over and help with the kids.
My cousin, who’s like another sister to us, her name is Winter. Winter has four little girls, and her girls, when they needed a sitter, Winter would call Rashida and ask her to come over and babysit for the four girls.
Getting to Know Rashida
That’s how I got to know Rashida, because all of the cousins—my kids, my sister’s kids, my cousin’s kids—all of them are very close to each other. So, we would often connect the dots and have playdates.
I would often end up in the same place with Rashida, who might be watching one of the groups of kids as they all got together. It gave us an opportunity, Rashida and I, to spend a little time together. Not much, but little pockets of time, little disjointed pieces of conversation as we were rallying kids from one place to another.
I got to talk to her and get to know her just a little bit. That’s when I found out a little bit about Rashida’s story.
Rashida’s Career Shift
I discovered that in her 20s and early 30s, she was on an upwardly mobile track in the company she worked for. Very successful and headed to the pinnacle of the company. I mean, she was doing well. She was making a lot of money and had a lot of ambition and dreams in terms of her position in this particular company.
She was excited about it when she began to feel the poking and prodding of the Lord. She wasn’t sure at first. It just felt like unrest; she wasn’t supposed to be there anymore.
And it didn’t make sense because, you know, her paycheck was what her paycheck was. People looked at her with approval; they respected her. She had already been told that she was on the upward track.
She knew she was destined for great things there, but there was unrest. So, she sought the Lord about that unrest.
Stepping Out in Faith
A woman who wants to follow God wants to do what He has asked her to do, wants to be in His will. So, she talked to the Lord about that unrest that she was feeling—why she didn’t feel cozy and comfortable there anymore.
She didn’t quite get it, but she just wanted to ask God what His will was. Through the confirmation she received from the messages taught on Sunday at our local church, her own personal Bible study, and wise mentors and friends who helped to confirm that over time, it was confirmed, «Yes, this seems to be the leading of the Lord.»
The only thing was she didn’t know what she was headed to. Has that ever happened to you, where you kind of feel unrest in one place, like the Lord is pointing you in a direction, but He hasn’t given you specific GPS coordinates?
You don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know what the end result will be, but Rashida just felt like, «Well, if God is leading me elsewhere, then where I’m going is going to be better than where I am now.»
So, she stepped out in faith. She left her job, waiting for God’s assignment, which is why she was babysitting when I met her.
Waiting and Frustration
In the interim, she decided to do what she loved—to hang out with pockets of kids and relieve some parents to go on some dates every now and then. She thought, «I’ll do what I love.»
She was fully invested in the task. By the way, she would always come over with a casserole of some sort made for the family so that mom didn’t have to worry about it.
She always came over with a Bible story, complete with all the illustrations necessary to engage the kids she was babysitting. She wanted to make sure they knew some verses before she left, and she would put them to songs on occasion so that they would have it ringing in their heads.
So, two months went by, and she enjoyed it. But those two months dovetailed into six months. Then the six months dovetailed into a year.
Still, she was waiting on God’s assignment, and here she was babysitting. That year became a year and a half.
By the time I last talked to her in this interim in her life, it had been about the two-year mark, and about two years in, she still loved the kids. But she was really trying to figure out where God was and why His next assignment for her had not materialized yet.
Feeling Cheated
At this point, she was a little bit frustrated; she was a little bit evangelically ticked off because God was taking His time. Anybody know what I’m talking about?
She’s frustrated. And honestly, she said, «I feel like I’ve been cheated because I’ve done what I felt like God asked me to do. I felt like He pointed me in this direction, and I was trusting Him to take me to the next phase, the next step, the next portion of my journey. But here I am stuck in this little interim space, and I can’t figure out why I’m here.»
And she said, «I just became very authentic with God in prayer. I was like, 'God, are you serious right now? Lord, I’ve been babysitting for two years. Surely you have something more for me.' Lord, I’ve got to be honest with you and tell you that I feel cheated.»
A Divine Revelation
So, she said, «Lord, I’m going to ask you to give me some clarity. I don’t know what’s going on, but I need you to either change my circumstances or change my heart because this doesn’t look like what I thought it would.»
She said that just a couple of days later, she had another babysitting assignment. That babysitting assignment that had already been planned was with my cousin, Winter, and her four girls.
She walked up to their front door. The front door is a wood door, but it has glass panels in it, so you can kind of see into the house.
And she said when she walked up to the door, casserole dish in hand, and rang the doorbell, she could already see the four little girls racing toward the door, smiles on their faces, enthusiastic because Miss Rashida was coming that night.
And she said that happened almost every time she came. But on this day, she saw those smiles differently—that they were eager to be in her presence.
Chosen, Not Cheated
She saw that there was so much meaning behind the fact that these four girls actually wanted to be with her—that they were expecting and anticipating whatever she was going to bring through the door.
And when the door opened, she said they immediately burst into one of the songs that she had taught them on a previous occasion when she was there—the verses from Scripture through those songs spilling out of these little girls' mouths as they quoted and sang one after the other, rehearsing back to her everything she had poured into them during the time she had spent with them.
And she said it was while they were singing and giggling and jumping all around her, casserole dish still in hand, when she first walked through the door, that the Holy Spirit whispered to her, «You’re not just babysitting. You get the privilege to help shape the souls of little human beings so that these women grow up to be mighty women of God.»
She said just about that time, as she’s standing there with the casserole dish in hand, Winter, the mom, had just gotten dressed up for the date she was going to have with her husband, and she came racing through the living room at the last moment to grab a few things before her husband pulled up to pick her up.
She said that as Winter raced through the house, she saw the casserole dish in Rashida’s hand. And Rashida said for the first time, she actually noticed the look of relief on that mom’s face—that she had provided, through this little casserole dish, a bit of solace and peace in the life of another woman, that she’d taken a little bit of the load off her plate.
And the Holy Spirit whispered to her, «You didn’t just bake a casserole. You helped to invest in the life of a woman that needs to know that I see her and I’ve got her back.»
And then she said when her husband walked through the door, and the two of them kissed their girls and left for a date—a date they hadn’t been on in a very long time—she said the Holy Spirit whispered to her and said, «You’re not just babysitting. You’re making sure that a marriage stays intact and has strength and passion and love.»
She said it was a sweet evening with those girls. And then she got back in the car to leave when the night was over, and she said one final time, the Holy Spirit whispered to her something she will never forget. He said, «You have not been cheated. You have been chosen.»
Feeling Cheated
Second Kings chapter 5 has a word for anybody in the house tonight who feels cheated. Because when you signed up for this job, it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.
When you walked down the aisle and said, «I do» to that guy, it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.
When you first gave birth to that baby, you didn’t know that 10 years, 15 years, 21 years later, this would be the drama you’d be going through in your relationship with that child.
You did not know that you would be on this job for this long. It wasn’t supposed to be your assignment over this much of your life.
You didn’t know that you would be walking through this season of singleness for this long. You didn’t know.
And you feel cheated because you’ve said yes to God. You’ve obeyed Him to the best of your abilities— not perfectly, but at least purposefully.
And you, like Rashida, feel like you’ve been cheated, irritated, a little frustrated if you’re honest with God because you’ve said yes, but this is not what you thought a yes would mean.
Naaman’s Resume
There’s encouragement for you in Second Kings. Second Kings chapter 5 starts by telling us about a captain in the army of Syria. He worked closely with the king. His name was Naaman.
I love verse one of chapter 5 because it’s basically a resume. In big, bold, bright, highlighted letters, we see his resume clearly spelled out. There are accolades and things he’s appreciated for.
We learn that he is a notable man who has a lot of admirers. This first verse reads like we would like any of our resumes to.
Just in this one simple verse, verse one of chapter 5, we find out that he’s successful. He’s the captain of the army. He leads troops into battles, and they emerge victorious.
But not only is he successful, he’s also well-respected because he doesn’t just lead his subordinates; he’s respected by them. They honor him. They esteem him. They find joy in following his leadership.
Not only is he successful and respected, he’s also celebrated. Those around him highly regard him. His name is known. His level of favor with those around him, those under him, and those who work side by side with him is at full capacity.
In fact, he is so celebrated and adored that even the king praises him for his work and worth.
Not only is he successful and respected, not only is he celebrated, he’s also feared because enemies and foes shake in their boots when they hear his name. He’s a mighty man of valor.
The text says he knows how to make sure that his adversaries are taken down.
This man has accolades. He has appreciation. He has notoriety. He has won the affection of all who know him.
His biography reads like the finest of resumes. But downplayed amongst all those accolades, there’s fine print in the resume.
Down below all of the bold font that headlines his life, there are five little words that changed the trajectory of the entire story: «But he was a leper.»
The Fine Print
Don’t let those five little small words fool you. Just because they’re minimal, just because they come at the tail end of that verse, just because they’re like a little tagline stuck onto this incredibly immaculate resume, don’t let them seem insignificant to you.
He is a leper, and in that age, leprosy was a devastating diagnosis. There was no cure, and it would incapacitate you over time, causing the nerve endings, particularly in your extremities, to become numb so that they could not feel pain and would be damaged again and again.
Fingers and toes would need to be amputated, or they would become dislodged. You would lose your extremities; your skin would become filled with boils and sores, and eventually, the fact that you had leprosy would completely incapacitate you and potentially kill you.
The thing is, this leprosy, even though it is the most distinguishing characteristic of his life, means life or death, and yet it is not highlighted. It is not bolded. It’s just tucked away and saved for the last little line.
Hidden Leprosy
And yet this leprosy could actually be the death of him. He fights it at home, trying to figure out a way to keep proof of it covered so that no one knows.
It plagues his thoughts during the day, wondering if anyone realizes how far gone he actually is.
He is a leper, and it’s downplayed amongst his accolades and all his notoriety. And yet it is the thing that could be the death of him.
In a room this size, the tragedy is that you and I have learned how to highlight and accentuate all of our accolades and all of the things we want people to see, read, and hear about us.
But in the fine print of our lives, Naaman is not the only leper who is in the room.
There are little ailments. There are hidden diseases of the heart, of our mind, emotionally and spiritually, and they are sucking the lifeblood out of us.
Functional Lepers
There is anger festering on the inside of you because of what was done to you or the betrayal you faced; that anger is now creating a bitterness that is making you hardened and numb so that you can’t have any healthy relationships in your life any longer.
There is pride that is keeping you from humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God.
Maybe there is a passionless marriage inside the four walls of your home. Nobody at church knows because you’ve both learned how to put on smiles and hold hands for the two hours that you’re in church. But when you go home, there’s no passion. There’s no peace. There’s no intimacy.
Or maybe it is fear that is crippling you in your heart or a lack of peace or financial instability or an addiction—a habit in your life that nobody else knows about because you’ve learned how to conceal it and cover it up when you’re outside the four walls of your home.
But when you’re at home, there’s a lapse in your integrity that nobody knows about.
The thing about leprosy is that you can only hide it for so long. You can only leave it as the small print, the fine print, of your life for so long because eventually, leprosy always leaks out.
Social Media vs Reality
And here’s the thing: our social media outlets don’t talk about our leprosy. We don’t highlight that because, you know, let Instagram tell it, all the meals we cook are gourmet masterpieces.
Let Instagram tell it, all the children we have raised are splendid little angels.
Let our social media presence tell it, and the houses we live in are pristine castles, and the man we married is a knight in shining armor.
The business we started is flourishing in every way, and the smile on our glowing, perfectly lit faces in our selfies relay a story of ease, peace, and wellness.
But I’m afraid, y’all, that underneath it all, there are some lepers in the room tonight— that there’s an ailment in your heart, and you’ve just not let anybody in. Nobody knows the thing that you’re really struggling with.
Functional Leper
And listen, I find it interesting that Naaman, even as a leper, is still working. Not only is he still working as captain of the army, but he’s still working in close proximity to the king.
That means, not only is he a leper, but he is a functional leper. The only thing worse than being a leper is being a functional leper.
You’ve learned so cleverly how to fool the people around you that you’re able to still function on your 8-to-5 job.
You’re able to still get yourself out of bed and function as a mom to these three children, or four children, or two children that you have.
You’re able to still function as the wife to your husband.
You’re able to still hang out with your girlfriends, single woman, and plaster a smile on to act like you’re content in this season of your life.
You’ve learned how to be a functional leper so you don’t have to deal with the real stuff that’s going on in your heart and in your mind—the stuff, y’all, that makes all of the tears fall down from our eyes late at night when nobody knows that we’re crying those tears or that we’re staying up extra minutes, extra hours as we wrestle with the leprosy that we know is there.
The tragedy is that we’ve not only gotten good at fooling everybody else; we’ve begun to fool ourselves into thinking we’re healthier than we actually are.
But that leprosy really is the defining thing that could be the death of us, just like it could for Naaman.
ER Episode Illustration
In the end, his chapter, his story, his name is known not so much for his accolades, not so much for what he’s appreciated for, not so much for the successes he’s achieved, the diplomas on his wall, or the people who applaud and appreciate him.
It’s what he does or does not do with this leprosy that really matters in the end.
I remember many, many years ago watching an episode of ER. You remember ER? Anybody in the room old enough to remember ER?
Who does not remember ER? You know what? We don’t even want to talk to you. Grey’s Anatomy. Well, ER started it all.
ER started all of the medical dramas. It was the one that kind of thrust that whole genre of television shows.
And I didn’t watch all of ER, honestly, but I caught an episode here and there. There was one episode that I will never forget.
There had been a horrible wreck, and there were a lot of people involved in the wreck. I don’t believe it was a car wreck. It may have been a bus or a train, but there were many people who were very, very tragically hurt.
They all came into the ER almost simultaneously, one after the other, needing medical attention.
And I remember that there was one particular young woman who was bloodied and bruised. She was unconscious. They were trying their best to save her life.
She was wheeled in on a gurney from the ambulance. Everybody was racing in around her—doctors and nurses trying to do what they could to tend to her.
Right beside her was her best friend. The two of them had been on a trip together, and her best friend ran right beside her.
Her best friend only had one little scratch that she was able to show a nurse on her shoulder. She could not believe that she had gotten out when so many people had been so hurt and damaged.
She couldn’t believe that this was all that had happened to her. So she’s running beside her best friend, and she’s trying to get her tended to.
Every now and then throughout the episode, someone comes over to the healthy friend and basically says to her, «Is there anything we can do for you? Can we check on you?»
And she says, «No, please don’t divert any of your attention away from my best friend, because she’s going to die if y’all don’t tend to her and all the other people that are here in the ER. Please divert your attention to them again.»
Several moments later, someone comes back and says, «Can I take a look at you?» And she says, «No, don’t you see? I’m fine. I don’t need any help. Please put all your energy elsewhere.»
The episode builds until at the very end, in the last few moments, this friend is standing over the bedside of her best friend, who has now just come out of surgery, recovering and going to be well.
She’s standing beside her friend, and in a moment’s notice, this friend who has been healthy for the entire day collapses to the floor.
Her eyes glaze over as nurses and doctors run in, check her pulse, and realize they cannot find a pulse; her heart has stopped beating.
Because the entire time she had internal damage that was bleeding out. And because she did not let anybody attend to her, because she didn’t attend to herself, she lost her life.
Check on Yourself
Listen, I flew over from Dallas, Texas in the cold and the rain and the fog because I came to attend to you, sisters.
I came to ask you if you’ve checked on yourself recently. I know you’re worried about her and him and the people in your house and the kids and the folks at Sunday school and everybody else who’s got stuff that they need you to invest in them regarding.
I came to ask you tonight, is there a leprosy that’s bleeding you out from the inside? Is there something that you need to contend with?
An addiction that you need to deal with? Strongholds that need to be broken? Fear that needs to be stepped away from? Hatred that needs to be dissolved?
Do you need the healing power of Jesus Christ? Tonight is the night to deal with yourself before time runs out.
What Will Be Remembered
Naaman was completely successful while being completely sick. He was outwardly victorious while suffering from the most tragic of vices. He was publicly applauded while being privately agonized over this leprosy.
Luke chapter 7, Jesus said about the Pharisees, «Woe to you. You are clean on the outside, but you’re full of filth on the inside.» He said, «You’re like whitewashed tombs. You look all pristine and whitewashed on the outside, but you’re still tombs. Inside, you’re full of dead men’s bones.»
Today is the day for us to look inward and not leave in the fine small print of our resumes the thing that really matters.
Because listen, everything hinges on what Naaman will choose to do with this leprosy. The remainder of this narrative hinges on the outcome of this ailment.
Either it will consume him and be the death of him, or he will bring it out into the open and give it to God through the prophet Elijah so that it can be a demonstration of the power of God in his life.
The trajectory of this portion of scripture—the part that will go down in the annals of history—is that a man with an incurable disease either gets healed by God or he does not.
The chapter could end by saying there was a man named Naaman who had a problem and kept his problem. There was a man named Naaman who had an issue, an ailment, and still in the end had that same issue, that same ailment.
Or the chapter could end as it does in verse 15 by saying, «And he was made clean.»
What we know about Naaman is based solely on what he did with his leprosy.
Do you understand that for generations to come, the story will be told about you from your daughters and your sons, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren?
They will talk about, yes, the things you accomplished and the things you achieved, but the most stunning, the most important, the most memorable things that people who come after you—whether they are nieces and nephews or your own children or just people in the Sunday school class, young people that you’re mentoring or folks in the youth group you serve or people on that college campus where you’re mentoring and touching the lives of other people—those are the stories they will tell.
The story they will tell is about the fact that they remember when we were once lost and now we are found—that we were once blind, but they watched us be able to see.
They will tell the stories about how there were ashes in our life, and our God made beautiful things out of those messy places.
That’s the story that people will tell. That’s what leaves the mark. It’s what we do with our leprosy.
Family Legacy
It’s whether we leave it hidden and concealed behind the veneers that we so perfectly put up on our social media profiles or whether we’ll just bring it out into the open and say, «Here it is. Here’s the real deal. God, would you do business with this? I’m tired of this anger. I’m ready to let it go. I’m tired of this pride. I want to humble myself under the mighty hand of God so that He can exalt me. I’m tired of living in a stale, passionless marriage. Lord, take it and do with it what you will.»
Lord, I want to be as I was. I want to be as you can make me to become.
Y’all, this is the story of my life on both sides of my family. My grandfather on my father’s side and my mother’s dad—both of them changed the trajectory of our lives.
Particularly my dad’s dad. His father was an alcoholic. He was not raised in a Christian home. They were quite antagonistic to the things of God.
My grandfather, as a longshoreman raising my father and his three siblings, made money for his family as best he could, hauling in fish every day.
But on the side, he literally made liquor in the basement. That’s what he did—perpetuating the cycle of addiction in which he lived there in the urban center of Baltimore.
But that’s the way he put food on the table—by selling liquor out of his basement.
In the meantime, his own family was crumbling. My grandfather and grandmother’s marriage was crumbling.
He was doing the best he could, but he had to work so hard he couldn’t really tend to the family as he wanted to. So everything was falling apart until one day on the docks, there on the shores of Baltimore, there was a man he worked with who told him about a man named Jesus who could change his entire life.
And that day, kneeling down right there at the harbor in Baltimore, my grandfather came to know Jesus Christ as Lord.
He brought all his leprosy out into the open. He told the guy about his marriage that looked so perfect on the outside with these four little cute kids; but really, it was crumbling from the inside out.
He opened up and came clean about his leprosy and gave his life to Jesus Christ.
He went home a different man. He came home to 1110 Papa Grove Street, the same house he still lives in today.
He came into this home, and for the next two or three years, every morning at 3:00, he would get up.
He says before my grandmother would get up to give him—this is what he said—“give him hell for the rest of the day, » before she started wagging her mouth about all the things she wanted him to change.
Before the day got hectic and started, he said he would come downstairs and fall to his knees.
He prayed to this new God that he didn’t know well. He opened up the Scriptures and read the Scriptures.
Oh my gosh, y’all. I just called my grandfather yesterday, and I talked to him on the phone. I said, «To Daddy, » we called him Two Daddy. I said, «To Daddy, what are you doing?» He said, «Oh, I’m just reading the Scriptures. You know Jesus is coming soon.»
He’s been doing it since his early 20s. He’s 89 now—reading the Scriptures and praying.
He prayed on his knees that the Lord would save his family until one morning, three years in, my grandmother, having given him a hard time for three years, came creeping down those little creaky stairs, knelt beside him, and said, «Whatever has happened to you to change you from who you were to who you are now, I want that kind of change in my life.»
And so my grandfather led my grandmother to Jesus. And then those two sat around the table with their four children—one of whom was Tony Evans—and shared the gospel with their four kids, giving to them the gift that had been given to my grandfather right there on the shores of Baltimore.
The entire family that day accepted Jesus Christ as Savior.
And I’m standing before you as one of his many dozens of grandchildren and now great-grandchildren.
And my father, the grandfather—the story that we tell of him, what we know about him—most of what we appreciate about him is not just the achievements and the accolades, not the things he’s accomplished or the successes he has.
It’s that one day, he met a man named Jesus, and he changed the trajectory of our lives because he took a stand.
The Captive Girl
But I have more to say. Listen, if you don’t have a legacy like I have, if you don’t have grandfathers or grandmothers that have done that in your life, listen, don’t get discouraged by that. Get excited because you get to be the one.
You get to be the one to change the trajectory of your entire life until one day your sons, daughters, and grandchildren tell the story of a woman that came to Radiant in 2017, gave her leprosy to God, and changed the course of their entire lives.
But y’all, that’s not even the best part of the story. The best part of the story is that in verse three, we find out there’s a little captive girl—a girl who has been displaced from her ambitions, her goals, her dreams, the comfort of her home.
She has been set in a place where she feels uncomfortable, where she doesn’t want to be. It is not the plan that she had for her life.
And in that place, she becomes the instrument that God uses to point somebody to the one true God.
I came to tell somebody who feels cheated because you’re trying to figure out how your trajectory in life that you had planned this way because the career path you had planned was pointed in this direction.
How did you end up on this job? The marriage that you had planned in your mind—how did you end up in this sort of a union?
The relationship with your child that you first envisioned doesn’t look anything like that.
Your financial situation was supposed to look like this, but somehow the Lord has allowed it to look like this, and you feel like you’ve been cheated.
I came to tell you that most often when we are displaced from our dreams to His, it often looks like captivity.
Oftentimes, it doesn’t look like anything you planned. You feel uncomfortable, and you wish you were back home.
And you may not know until centuries later, in Luke chapter 4, when Jesus is telling the story—when Jesus wants to make sure, when Jesus has shown up on the scene, and in His own words, He wants to authenticate His deity and reaches back to a story from the Old Testament to make sure all the people in the New Testament know that He is who He says He is and has come to do exactly what He says He’s going to do.
The little captive girl could never have known that she was the key to the story.
You Are Chosen
And I’m here to tell you that you, displaced captive girl, are the key to the story.
If He has not released you from that job, then stay on that job and be the light in the midst of the darkness.
If you are still in that neighborhood and you’ve been trying to move but you can’t find the right place anywhere else, and so there you are in that apartment, in that home that you can’t wait to break free from— the reason you are still there is that you are going to be the light in the midst of the darkness.
You are the key to the people in your sphere of influence knowing that there is a God in Israel— that there is a God who is able to perform healing in their lives.
If the Lord hasn’t let you switch churches, that means you’re not supposed to switch churches. You’re supposed to be planted in the house of God where He has put you so that you can be His key in the midst of that unity of believers that are serving Him.
Wherever God has planted you, He intends for you to be. Even if you feel cheated, would you know you’ve not been cheated, but you’ve been chosen.
You’re the one, little captive girl. You’re the one. You’ve been chosen by God to be exactly where you are.
University student, you’re the one. High school student, you’re the one. You are the one. You’ve been waiting for.
Stay where you are, not cheated, with your chin raised, knowing, «Actually, I’ve been chosen.»
Rashida’s Passing
I want you to know that Rashida was driving from Dallas Fort Worth to Waco, Texas, for a conference. Nobody really knows exactly what happened, but about 3:00 in the morning or so, our phone started buzzing as we got news that Rashida was in a head-on collision.
In the hour and 15 minutes it took her to get from Dallas to Waco, she was in a head-on collision, and in an instant, she went to see Jesus. At 36 years old.
And when I heard the news, the only thing I could think was, «I am so glad that before she saw Him face to face, she knew that He had not cheated her, but that He had chosen her.»
Invitation to Stand
You know, I want to pray for you if you are in this room and either one of two things describes you in this story.
Either you have leprosy that you have not been dealing with. You’ve been here all conference long, and you have enjoyed yourself, but you know there is a thread of sickness. There is an ailment in your heart, or in your mind, or in your marriage. There is a lapse of integrity. There is something that is off-kilter, and you’ve gotten so good at covering it up.
But you want to come clean tonight so that you can be known not as the woman who carried this ailment her whole life, but as the woman who handed that ailment over to Jesus and watched Him do something with it—make beautiful things out of those ashes.
I want to pray for you if that’s you tonight. I’m going to ask you to stand in just a moment.
But there’s another group of you that I want to pray for. It’s any of you who are in the room and you feel cheated. I mean, you feel cheated—this is not what you signed up for.
I want to pray that the Lord by His Spirit will help you tonight to see things from His perspective when you go back to that home, to that job, to that neighborhood, to that university campus, to go back with His perspective on why He has planted you there so that you will know you’ve not been cheated but that you’ve been chosen.
So if you fall into either of those categories—there’s a leprosy that needs healing in your life, or there’s a change of perspective that you want to leave here with at the end of the Radiant conference this week—would you please stand to your feet?
It would be my privilege to take us all before the throne of God in prayer.
Closing Prayer
So, Lord Jesus, I bring those of us starting with me who are standing to our feet.
Father, I pray right now in the matchless name of Jesus Christ for leprosy that is eating away at us, numbing us, desensitizing us, Lord, keeping us from living to our full potential.
Father, I pray right now in Jesus' name that you would, by your healing balm, pour out your grace and your mercy upon every single heart.
I pray that marriages would be restored. I pray that strongholds would be broken. I pray that fear would dissipate. I pray that hate would be softened.
Lord, I pray that hardened hearts would be mended. I pray that brokenness would be salvaged. I pray that fissures would be restored. I pray that you would resuscitate and breathe life back into your daughters.
Lord, I pray that we would no longer cover up that which we need to expose to the healing power of our great God.
And we thank you, Father, that you not only sympathize with us in your humanity but that you can turn around in your power and actually perform a healing miracle in our lives.
So, I pray for health in Jesus' name. Health in Jesus' name. I pray for restoration, resurrection, resuscitation, renewal in Jesus' name.
And then, Father, I pray for those who are discouraged because they feel cheated. They’re honest with you right now. Father, they feel irritated and frustrated because life as it is going is not how they had it planned.
So, I pray right now that you would displace discouragement off of their lives. Would you replace it with a cloak of encouragement in Jesus' name?
Send them out of here with holy contentment, Father, remembering that you are who you say you are and that you will accomplish through their lives exactly what you have said that you will accomplish.
Lord, fit us with your glasses to see our situations through your perspectives.
And we will give you all the praise and all the glory and all the honor in Jesus' name.
Everybody agreed when they said, «Amen.» Amen.