Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Job 13-14
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 9:22
Jesus: Take heart, daughter. Your faith has healed you.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
In the 1970’s and 1980’s, a not so quiet revolt across our college campuses began to tell us God is dead. Or there is no God. Atheism had a heyday with suits about pray in schools, separation of church and state. The theory of evolution was no longer taught as theory, but fact and anyone who believed in creation must be crazy. Such was the change that swept through ‘higher education’ and told us what we should think if we were truly enlightened.
An interesting thing happened among the researchers in the last few years, though. People of faith heal faster and have a more complete recovery than those that do not profess any faith in God. Go figure! Hundreds of thousands of dollars went into the study and other researchers tried their best to debunk the study. The results stood the test. Faith wins. Faith helps in the healing process.
So let’s go back to Jesus’ words and put them into context. An official whose daughter just died came to Jesus for help. Jesus and His disciples get up and head to the official’s home. Curious to see what will happen, a crowd follows the disciples until they are pressed from every side and must push their way through. But a woman makes her way through the crowd and touches Jesus’ cloak. She suffered from a bleeding disorder for 12 years. She tried every remedy all her friends and all the physicians she could afford told her to try to no avail.
Mark relates that Jesus asked, “Who touched Me?” But Matthew says Jesus turned and saw the woman. Some will say, “Aha! Proof that the Bible is just stories, look at the discrepancy in the accounts!” But the discrepancy really adds to the proof of the reality of the event. Two witnesses give testimony to the healing of the woman with a disease she had for 12 years. Did He ask the question or did He just turn and see her? Does it matter?
If you were sitting on a jury and every witness to a car accident said exactly the same thing about the accident, every detail related in the same order, with the same emphasis, content, and descriptions,what would you think? I’d think one of the lawyers did a pretty poor job of rehearsing the witnesses. No one sees an accident exactly the same way. Try it with your spouse, a friend, or a stranger. Spend two or three minutes looking at the same scene, room, or even a painting. Then each of you write a description of that picture separately and compare your descriptions. You’ll be surprised at how different they are.
Now remember that the gospels were written some thirty years after the events! Pretty remarkable recollection, don’t you think? So, back to the story. Whether Jesus asked or turned and saw the woman, He found her out and she came forward and told Him what she had done. She thought if she could just touch His clothing she could be healed if this disease that plagued her for so long. She knew that’s all it would take, just a touch of His cloak and the work would be done. She just had to try. So she pushed forward through the crowd and touched Him. Luke says she just touched the tassels on His cloak.
Jesus surprised everyone with His words. “Take heart, daughter. Your faith has healed you.”
Did you get that? Your faith has healed you! Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story and all of them tell us she found healing immediately! She didn’t have to find another doctor. She didn’t have to go to the drug store and get different herbs or home remedies. She didn’t need some incantation. She didn’t even need Jesus to lay His hands on her. She exercised enough faith to believe all she needed to do was touch the tassles on His cloak and she would find what she was looking for.
Do you have that kind of faith? I’m afraid we let our doubts get in the way far too often today. Do we really believe God can do the kinds of things He did through His children in the early church? I’ve said it before, “God hasn’t changed. His Son hasn’t changed. His Spirit hasn’t changed.” So what has changed? I’m afraid it’s our faith. I’m afraid we no longer believe God can do what He says He can do. Jesus said nothing is impossible for God. Do we really believe that is true?
Do we limit God’s work in our lives today because we put Him in a box and just fail to exercise faith in Him? Do we confine His activity in our prayers because we just really don’t think He can do what we ask Him to do? When will we learn that God is God and we are not? When will we learn that our limitations have nothing to do with what God can or can not do? When will we finally discover that, like the woman in our scripture today, God wants to do so much more for us than we can even imagine. All we need to do is have faith in Him. Not just say we do, but have real faith in Him.
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