Mental Health Sermon 6: Hope

Healing can be elusive. Mental health disorders and challenges are complex; they ebb and flow; they’re unpredictable. The healing we desire can be elusive.

If you are searching for hope today and struggling to find any; if you’re hanging onto hope by a thread—for yourself or someone you love; if hope of getting better feels more like far-fetched fantasy, lean into the story of Naaman from this sermon. Naaman found that healing was more of a journey than a wave of the hand. And that the journey is worth it. 

Supporting Scripture

2 Kings 1, 6-14

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”

When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

11 But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

13 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” 14 So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” Proverbs 17:17

“as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.Psalm 103:12

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17

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Service Time: 10:30 a.m.