Healed of Leprosy, Set Apart to Preach

Three-year-old Naaman was dying of chicken pox. He also had leprosy as he lay wrapped in a large banana leaf in his mother’s arms. His two older brothers had died as young children, and his father blamed the mother for offending the gods and spirits, as pagan villagers in India would be prone to do. The situation was desperate. The witchdoctors and Hindu gods had not healed Naaman, and Naaman’s father now was threatening to kill his mom if Naaman died. With gun in hand, he vowed, “If you let my third son die by not appeasing the gods and spirits for whatever offense you have caused them, I will kill you.”
As the mother held her son and wept outside her home, in a village where there were no Christians, a Christian starting the first church in the area was walking through the village to another village. He saw the mother weeping and came over to her. When he understood the situation, the man of God asked if the mother would allow him to pray for the boy in the name of Jesus, the one and only Son of God and Saviour of sinners, God the Son, Jesus Christ our Messiah and Lord.
The pastor said the mother must also be willing to give the boy to Christ to be a messenger of the Gospel if the Lord gave him life from the brink of death. The pastor also said that as a public testimony of the Lord Jesus having all power, greater than the Hindu gods and spirits who had not healed the boy, the parents were to change his name to Naaman, like Naaman in the Bible (2 Kings 5), whom the Lord healed of leprosy.
Then the Christian took the almost lifeless little one in the banana leaf and knelt in prayer as the villagers stood around watching. He called on the one and only God, the Lord God Almighty, to have mercy on the little boy and the parents in the name of Jesus God’s Son sent to die for sinners as the only sacrifice of appeasement, the Lord Jesus of all power, the Creator and Sustainer of life, the crucified and risen Saviour, the Messiah at the Father’s right hand.
The result was similar to the first Naaman from Aram who worshipped other gods: “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15).
Twenty-seven years after the Lord Jesus raised up a limp little three year old dying in his mother’s arms in a village with no Christians, Namaan now serves the Lord Jesus by taking the Good News of God’s love in his Son to unreached villages, as the pastor who prayed for him had done. Namaan still bears the scars of leprosy in different parts of his body, which continue to testify that Jesus has power that no one else has.
Right away, Naaman’s mother turned from her idols to the true and living God who had reached out to her and her son. Christ came to the village by coming to live in this woman who now believed. Then the father believed, and put his gun away. Then another, and another, so that today there are now 70 families in this village that once was without hope and without God.