Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - God is Transforming You Today | Historical Books | 2 Kings 8:1-15

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Do you only see change as something in the past? How is God changing you today? Who will you be in seven years? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 2 Kings 8:1-15 reminds us that God's grace never stops transforming us. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Kings 8:1-15

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. There are two fundamentally different views that people tend to have about a big idea. The idea is of how they experience change or transformation in life. We can use the analogy of a car to describe how those views play out in people's lives. So the first perspective with the car analogy is like a person who's driving a car. but only looking out of the rear view mirror.

Now, if they're only looking through the rear view mirror, they're going to see change and growth as significant parts of their lives, but things that are relegated to the past. They've simply moved on from the events that made them who they are here and now. So like a driver looking at the rear view mirror, this person only thinks of chains and transformation as things that have happened in the past that aren't happening anymore. The second perspective on change and growth is like shifting your perspective from the rear view mirror to the windshield to see what's happening now, to see what's coming in the future.

In this view, change and growth and transformation aren't simply things that happened one time in the past. There are things that are still happening now and will continue to reshape our views, our preferences, our habits, our identities as time goes by. Now, when you think about change or transformation or growth in your life, do you tend to look at it through the perspective of the rear view mirror as if it's only a reality that you can see in the past? Or do you tend to look at it also through the perspective of the windshield with more change and more growth happening here in the present but also in the future as the years go by? It's interesting researchers observe that most of us tend to take on the perspective of the perspective. of the rear view mirror because we're stuck in what they call the end of history illusion. Here's how scientists described the end of history illusion in a 2013 article from Science magazine. They write this. We measured the personalities, values, and preferences of more than 19,000 people

who ranged in age from 18 to 68 and asked them to report how much they had changed in the past decade and or to predict how much they would change in the next decade. Now get this, they write this. Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past, but would change relatively little in the future. People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment, at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. That's a big take, but a lot of us assume that.

We're just looking at the rearview mirror. We are who we are. We'll always be this way. They end the article in Science magazine with this summarizing observation. Both teenagers and grandparents seem to believe that the pace of personal change has slowed to a crawl and that they have recently become the people they will remain. History, it seems, is always ending today. Now, that end of history illusion is so fascinating as it relates to the way.

relates to the way people view the journey of life, but I think especially for the way that people view the journey of faith. I think a lot of us think this way. I do. When it comes to encountering God's grace, we can all fall for a kind of end of transformation illusion. We appropriately name and celebrate God's work in our lives in the past through the rear view mirror, yet we often struggle to see the transformation that God is trying to make happen right now. The ways that God's grace is trying to restore us here and now. This is a dynamic that impacts everybody. Whether you're newer to Christianity, you're exploring Christianity, or you've been following Jesus for years, we can all tend to settle into who we've become in the most recent season of

change or growth. And we can find ourselves stuck in this end of transformation illusion. To use a different analogy, it's as if we're watching God's work in our lives, like it's a documentary on events in the past? Now, that's not a bad thing, but if that's all we do is watch the documentary of God's work, we can miss the work that God is trying to do here and now and in the future. Now, in our time together today, we'll look at a passage in 2nd Kings chapter 8 that describes a woman who experienced significant restoration at a certain point in her life's story. Yet, instead of being stuck in the end of history, the end of transformation illusion, she experiences God's loving restoration through the windshield of the present tense.

Now, as we get ready to approach God's word together, let's pause as we always do and ask for his grace to move in and through our time. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're slow down, and we thank you for the gift of life and breath. we thank you for your word we bring before you our joys and our sorrows our anxiety and our excitement our calendars and our contingencies would you meet us in this space here and now jesus help us abide and remain in you as we engage with your truth and holy spirit we ask you to move in and through this time in second kings as we read your living word may it read us and restore us to new life with you.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, now in 2nd Kings chapter 8, verse 1, we are reintroduced to the Shunamite woman that Elisha encountered back in chapter 4. We're reminded of some powerful key moments in this woman's story. If you remember, she was able to not only have a son by God's grace, but also have that son restored to life after he tragically died. Now, chapter 8 picks up this woman's story after she has been in the land of the Philistines

for seven years due to a famine. Now that she's returned to Israel, she needs a place to call home. We're going to read verses 3 through 6 and see how God's work in her life continues to play out in the present tense. Let's start in verse 3. And at the end of seven years, when the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, she went to appeal to the king for her house and her land. Now the king was talking with Gahazi, the servant of the man of God, saying, Tell me all the great things that Elisha has done. And while he was telling the king how Elisha had restored the dead to life, behold, the woman whose son had been restored to life appealed to the king for her house and her land.

And Gahazi said, my lord, O king, here is the woman. Here is her son whom Elisha restored to life. When the king asked the woman, she told him, So the king appointed an official for her saying, Restore all that was hers, together with all the produce of the fields, from the day that she left the land until now. Let's notice a few key features in this follow-up to the Shunamite woman's story. First, there's a reflection on God's work so far in her life.

There is this past restoration that is absolutely worth celebrating. We're reminded that, yes, looking back on God's faith, faithless in the past is absolutely crucial in the life of faith. I mean, just think about the story of the Bible overall. God's people have always been a people of remembering. So it's vital that we remember God's restoration in the past. But notice how even in this passage, in that celebration, we don't exclusively look through the rearview mirror alone.

We let remembering direct our gaze out the front windshield. Because even though seven years have passed, in this woman's life, God's work is not stuck in the past of her life. Just as God restored her son to life years ago, here and now, he's restoring her land to her. But she's not simply getting the land that she had before. Verse 6 says that she also receives all the produce of the fields since the time she left. Her restoration includes more than she would have had if she would have remained in Israel. God's grace arrives in a superabundance that we can't possibly measure. It's a kind of restoration that we could miss if we didn't see what God is trying to do right in front of us.

Now, I want you just think for a moment about the fact that it's been seven years, seven years that the Shunamite woman sojourned away from Israel. Now, she could have looked back over those seven years like an isolated documentary, celebrating the gracious restoration of God, but not anticipating any future grace. But this return to her story with present tense restoration. This is evidence that God's grace never stops pursuing us. There's always more restoration of our hearts, more restoration of our minds, as we surrender to the movement of God's kingdom every day of life.

This reintroduction to the Shunamite woman. story. It portrays the difference between a faith that only sees God's work like a documentary and a faith that can celebrate that past work of God while also, while also, seeing what God is trying to do here and now, not just in the past, but here and now today. This is like live news coverage of God's work. We are live on the scene, seeing how God is at work right here, right now. And not only that, we're cultivating a curiosity and imagination about how he's going to continue restoring us in the years to come. So think just for a moment, are there ways that you're stuck with a kind of end-of-history

illusion in your relationship with God? When you talk and think about His grace, do you only use the past tense? Stuck in the rear-view mirror? Only watching the documentary? The Shunamite woman in 2nd Kings 8 is evidence that God's restoration work is not just cemented in history. It's still happening in real time. It's being covered live right here, right now. And God's loving transformation, it won't stop until the day Jesus returns to make all things new.

By his grace in seven years, you'll look back and hardly recognize who you are today. And that doesn't minimize who you are right now. On the contrary, it actually maximizes who you are and who you are becoming as God continually transforms your life. So yes, we join all of God's people by looking back on his faithfulness in the rearview mirror. But we also let his past faithfulness help us see out the windshield to what he's doing right here and now today. So celebrate the documentary. But don't forget that there's live coverage, of the work that God is doing right here and now,

work that he's going to continue doing all the days of your life. Father, we praise you for your track record of faithfulness. You are good and you do good. Jesus, we depend on you and your sacrificial love to continue transforming us in each new day. Spirit, would you give us a faithful, hopeful curiosity about the ways your love is restoring us in this moment of this day and the ways that you'll continue to do so in all the days to come.

We pray all of this because of your grace, for your glory, in your bigger story. In Jesus' name, amen.