Matthew 8:2     

“And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, ‘Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.’”

There are two important lessons I learn from the leper, lessons I pray I do not forget quickly. The first lesson is that worship should precede petition. When we are under pressure to have God touch us, we often jump straight into making our requests before stopping to acknowledge His majesty and awesomeness. The leper knew he was a leper, and he desperately needed healing, but he first recognized Jesus as the One deserving of worship. Worship need not be a song or an official protocol. Worship is the heart of recognition that God is the Greatest, the Most Wonderful, the Blessed Almighty. To worship correctly, you also need to see your smallness in comparison to His Amazingness. Don’t jump into petitioning and requesting; pause and first acknowledge God for who He is and what He has done.

The second lesson I learned from the leper is that God’s ability does not always equate God’s willingness. Jesus was willing to heal the leper, but the leper did not come with the assumption that Jesus would heal him. Though some may think that the leper was faithless by the way he phrased his request, on the contrary, the simple leper demonstrated a knowledge of theology that many today do not have. God has the power to do all things, but does God always do all things? God could heal all His children, but does God heal all His children? The fact that God does not answer your prayer when you want and how you want does not show God’s lack of love or God’s inability. We must make our bold requests in total faith, knowing He can meet all our needs.  We need to remember that God in His sovereignty, could choose not to meet our needs at the time we want and in the way we want. This was something the leper understood, and it’s something we must always remember when we present our petitions to God.

“Father, I worship You for who You are and for all You do. I bless Your Majesty and Greatness, and I bow before You. I know You love me and You hear my cries. I ask that in Your sovereignty, meet my needs according to Your riches in glory. But if You are unwilling to so do for some sovereign reason of Yours, then I will wait and still trust in Your complete love for me. Teach me to keep worshipping while I wait. Amen.”