…All the people followed, crowding around him. A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.
Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”
His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. And he said to her,“Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”
Last night God opened an amazing door for me and another sister to go into a home for homeless women and share a message from God’s word. This is the passage that was placed on my heart. I really can’t think of anything better to encourage those of us who are broken.
You know we all have some sort of constant bleeding. Our hearts are bleeding. Our marriages are bleeding. Our fractured relationships are bleeding. Our souls are bleeding.
We spend all our money. We medicate. We run. We hide. But just like this woman, we only get worse. The pain deepens and our hopelessness grows.
This woman heard about a healer and she believed. She pressed her way through a frenzied crowd to just touch the clothes of Jesus, the healer. The power of her touch was so great that it stopped the Lord of earth and sea in his tracks. Immediately she felt whole. Yet she was shaking in fear.
Have you ever wondered why she was so scared? My guess is that she knew she was considered unclean. She suffered for twelve years with this and I’m sure word got around town. If she got caught out and about AND touching a man the consequences could have been dire. She risked everything to get to Jesus. She put it all on the line that day.
Which makes me wonder, what are we willing to risk to get to Jesus? We may have to put our safety on the line. We may have to sacrifice relationships, jeopardize our job, and walk away from our whole way of life. We may have to be vulnerable in ways that terrify us. But if it means just touching the seams of his clothes, it is worth it.
I long to hear those words spoken to me, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”
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