“All he needed was nothing, but nothing was the one thing he didn’t have.” That phrase sticks in my mind every time I read it in one of our children’s Bibles. It’s talking about a man named Naaman. He was a very important man in a very important position in a very important country. Yet, God used leprosy to teach him an important lesson: All he needed was nothing. God and God alone did all the saving.
Have you learned that lesson yet? Or is that saying true for you: “All he needed was nothing, but nothing was the one thing he didn’t have.” There is nothing we can do to save ourselves. There is nothing we bring to the bargaining table with God. Except, we sure like to try. “Look at my looks. Look at my money. Look at my generosity. Look at my talents. God, look at how important I am!” But God isn’t impressed. He looks for a humble and repentant heart that comes to him with nothing but trust in his grace.
Like he did for Naaman, God used suffering in the apostle Paul’s life to teach him that all he needed was nothing. That’s why he could write: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:10). It was at the moments when he had nothing that Paul could most clearly see what he had in Jesus: Forgiveness, life, peace, love, heaven—everything! All you need is nothing, because with Jesus, when you have nothing, you possess everything!
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