Indeed I Said to Myself
Is there a time in your life when you quietly said to yourself that this is how God is going to do it, that this is meant to happen in my life, and that this is how it is supposed to unfold? I think many of us do this more often than we realize. We do not just pray for an outcome, we also decide the way in which it should happen, almost as if we are writing the script and expecting God to follow it.
I hear this often in everyday conversations. Parents speak about what their children should study and become, how they want their children to be married by a certain age, to own a house, to have children in between, and to be settled in life. It sounds structured, it sounds wise, and it even feels right. But many times, life does not unfold in that way at all. And when it doesn’t, the disappointment is not always because God did not do anything. It is often because He did not do it in the way we had already imagined. Truth be told, its not only the parents but also the individuals who want things to happen in a certain way all the time.
I remember a time in my own life when I wanted to move to a foreign country for work. There was a job opportunity from a town in the UK that I liked very much. I liked the place, I liked the football team there, and everything seemed to align so well with what I wanted. In my mind, it all came together neatly, and I remember thinking to myself that it matched exactly what I had hoped for. And yet, that move never happened.
Looking back now, I can see that what I called alignment was not necessarily God’s confirmation. It was often just my preference, arranged in such a way that it felt spiritual. That realization came much later, but it helped me understand something about the way I tend to think and the way I tend to approach God.
As I was reading 2 Kings 5, I saw this same pattern in Naaman. He did not just come looking for healing; he came with an expectation of how that healing should take place. There is a very honest line that he speaks, and it almost feels like we are hearing his thoughts out loud. He says, “Indeed, I said to myself…”, because it captures something very real. Before anything even happened, he had already decided how it would happen.
Naaman expected the prophet to come out, stand before him, call on the name of the Lord, and perform something visible, something significant, something that matched his position and his need. But instead of that, Elisha does not even come out to meet him. He sends a message from inside the house, asking Naaman to go and wash himself in the Jordan seven times. It feels too simple, too ordinary, and almost beneath him.
This is where the struggle begins, and if I am honest, it is a struggle I recognize. The issue is not that God is unable or unwilling to act; it is that His way of acting does not match what we have already decided. We are drawn to things that are dramatic and visible. We want something that looks significant, something we can easily recognize and explain. But God often works in simplicity, and in that simplicity, He also addresses something deeper within us.
Naaman finds it difficult to accept this. He begins to compare the rivers and questions why he should go to the Jordan when there are better rivers in his own land. That moment feels very familiar, because we also tend to compare. When something does not happen in the way we prefer or expect, we begin to doubt it. We quietly conclude that it may not work, simply because it does not fit our understanding.
It reminds me of the simple story of the fox and the grapes. The fox tries again and again to reach the grapes but cannot, and in the end, it walks away saying the grapes are sour. Sometimes we do something similar. We do not reject something because it is wrong, but because it did not meet our expectation.
Naaman almost walks away at that point, not because there was no solution, but because the solution did not match what he had already said to himself. It takes the intervention of his servants to bring him back. They do not argue with him; they simply ask if he would have done it had the instruction been something great. That question begins to soften him.
He finally goes down to the Jordan and begins to wash. Nothing seems to change at first, and I can only imagine what must have been going through his mind with each step. But he continues, and on the seventh time, everything changes. His healing does not begin when he arrives, nor when he becomes angry, but when he lets go of what he had said to himself and chooses to follow what was actually spoken.
What he says after that is just as powerful. He declares that now he knows that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel. There is a clear shift from “Indeed, I said to myself” to “Indeed, now I know.” Something has changed within him, not just externally but internally.
As I sat with this passage, I found myself reflecting on my own life. I began to ask what I have already decided in my heart about how God should work, and whether those expectations are quietly standing in the way of simple obedience. Because sometimes the miracle is not missing; it is simply waiting on the other side of self surrender.
I find myself praying that the things I have said to myself would not become barriers, but that they would be replaced with a deeper knowing of who God is and how He works. Because in the end, the transformation is not only in what God does for us, but in what He changes within us when we learn to trust Him beyond our own expectations. As you read this, may your “Indeed I said to myself” become “Indeed I know there is a God”
Every prayer, share, and act of support is deeply appreciated.
