The Gift That Faith Gives
She came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
Mark 5:27-29 (NIV)
Twelve years is a long time to suffer from anything, let alone uncontrollable loss of blood. But the woman in Mark 5 endured those twelve years, draining her bank account on doctors and living distanced from everyone because of her perpetually unclean status. But then Jesus appeared on the scene, and she found the healing that she had hoped for.
This account demonstrates the discipline of faith—a faith that kept exercising hope in God’s ability to change human conditions and restore human lives. It’s the discipline of faith to believe God, not just to the breaking point, but to believe God beyond the breaking point. Faith takes us not just to a threshold, but enables us to believe God on the other side of a threshold. Faith causes you to never give up, to believe that no matter how far, how long, or how hard we have to hang in there, we’ll go down believing He can create change.
This discipline of faith gives us a gift: an indefatigable drive to be relentless. Tireless faith gives you the gift to stay energetic, even with a draining and debilitating illness, a burden, or a heavy weight in life. Faith gifts us with a mindset of hope.
Every one of us experiences things that wear us out. But when we have faith, someone might ask us “Why are you still here? Why are you still smiling? Why are you still optimistic? Why do you still pray? Why do you keep forgiving? Why do you keep laughing? Why do you keep giving your best?”
Your answer can be, “Because every day, faith pulls up to my doorstep and drops off relentless energy so that what I can’t do on my own, the Holy Spirit empowers me to do.”
If it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit, we’d have given up a long time ago, but thank God for an indefatigable Spirit, who gives us the gift of continuing on with hope.
The woman in this passage had been drained of everything in her life, including blood, bank, belonging, and the only thing that had not been completely drained was her faith, so that is what Jesus used to perform His miracle of healing.
Faith will give you the gift of relentless hope.
When Jesus Says, “Let Me Drive.”
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)
The faith that makes us drive ourselves to Jesus has to become a faith that matures enough to let Jesus do the driving.
Jesus responds to the faith we drive to Him, but we mature from the faith that we surrender to being driven by Him.
Here’s the thing that’s hard to accept: your faith can’t grow if all you want to do is drive.
In your life, there will be areas of challenge, where you encounter frustration because Jesus is trying to work in your life, but it requires you to surrender the wheel to Him first. Faith is not just the spirituality that guides your drive toward His kingdom. Faith is a trust that surrenders to Him driving you.
And where does Jesus drive you?
- From attraction to surrender.
- From curiosity to obedience.
- From desire to dependence.
- From wanting your conditions to change to wanting to simply live out the call of God upon your life.
- From asking for what you want to seeking what is in His will.
- From asking God not only to protect and bless your steps but to order your steps.
- From God being your logistics manager to being your strategy consultant.
Jesus says to us, “While your urgency drove you to this point, I need to drive the greater purpose that is surrounding your life.”
Will you give Him the driver’s seat today?
A Burden for Others
A centurion’s servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant.
Luke 7:2-3 (NIV)
In Luke 7:1-10, we read of a Roman centurion who was respected by the Jews in his community, and who made a request of Jesus. One of his servants was deathly ill, and he asked Jesus to heal him.
Notice the burden he carries for his servant. This is not a son who bears the weight of carrying the family name and guarantees a monetary future. This is not a daughter who has taught him the power of love and protection and how to be the necessary mix of nurturer and defender. This is not a spouse whose heart has been knitted to his, beloved until he can’t imagine enduring the rest of his life without her.
This is a servant—utilitarian at best, expendable at worst. And yet, the centurion soldier carries such a deep burden for him that he’ll use whatever proximity he has to Jesus. He’ll expend whatever privilege that is his to get a word to Jesus. And when he does get a word to Jesus, he doesn’t make it about himself.
He doesn’t say, “Increase my fortunes.” He doesn’t say, “Elevate my name.” He doesn’t say, “Increase my title” or “Enlarge my territory.” He says, “I have a servant and I am burdened for him; I need you to heal him.”
This centurion’s request is not about himself. His burden on that day was for somebody else. Do you know how strange that sounds in these days in which we live? Most people these days are excessively caught up in their own space. But when the chance comes for this man to focus the spotlight on himself, he instead used the privilege of access and the potential that proximity provided him to request that Jesus come minister to his servant.
I believe that a strong indication of Jesus’s impact on our lives is revealed in the burdens it creates in us for other people.
This burden is the spiritual discipline needed to share Jesus with others. God gives us this burden because that is how the kingdom is expanded. It is what feeds evangelism. It is what adds fuel to your witness and testimony.
We all should long for an increase of the burden to see others enjoy a relationship with Jesus, to help others understand the power of God’s love and the strength of forgiveness and live a redeemed life.
Do you carry a burden for the people around you to experience Jesus?
Blessed by What He Sees
When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.
Matthew 8:14-15 (NIV)
The healing of Peter’s mother-in-law is recorded in three different Gospels. It’s interesting to read the subtle distinctions between the three accounts.
In Mark’s retelling, he remembers them getting to the house and immediately upon entering, Peter and Andrew tell Jesus about the sickness of Peter's mother-in-law. They just tell him. There's no mention of them asking Jesus to do anything about it.
The way Luke tells it, he doesn't mention the immediacy, but what he does remember is that Peter and Andrew specifically ask Jesus to respond to her feverish condition.
What I noticed in Matthew's remembrance is that when they entered the house, Jesus saw the woman’s condition and then responded. There is no mention of promptings or requests.
All three writers were there. One says Jesus is simply told about her and He moves to minister to her. The other says He's asked to involve Himself in her condition and He does. Matthew says He is neither told about it nor asked to intervene, but sees it Himself and is moved by what He sees.
These three different viewpoints tell me that Jesus doesn't only respond to the issues, needs, or battles in your life based on your awareness of them or your initiative taken to make it your immediate important priority. Nor does He only respond when you ask Him to intervene. There are times when Jesus will exercise His authority, walk directly into your reality, and address the issues in your life that need addressing.
Jesus will fight the things that are threatening you, not necessarily based on what you've made a priority, not necessarily because you stated it as a request, but because He loves you enough that when He sees what you need, He is willing and able to bring the necessary change.
Fruit in the Off-Season
Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.
Matthew 21:18-19 (NIV)
Jesus and the disciples have apparently left Mary and Martha’s house extremely early in the morning because after making some progress on their journey, Jesus is hungry. He and the disciples are headed to Jerusalem. They are near a place called Bethphage, a suburb just outside of the city. Jesus approaches a fig tree and starts lifting leaves, looking for some small figs. He knows it is unlikely that He would find any larger figs on this tree because they don’t generally ripen until the summer months.
The context of our passage places this event just before the month of March and even smaller figs don’t show up until March or April. When Jesus doesn’t find any figs on this tree, He curses the tree rather harshly, and interestingly enough, He places permanence on His curse. “May no fruit ever grow on this tree again!” And the fig tree withers immediately.
Jesus is expecting fruit on the tree, or maybe He’s expecting nothing at all but is just using it as a lesson. Either way, the tree is being cursed for not having fruit when it was not the season for the tree to bear fruit.
Isn’t that interesting? Why is Jesus looking for fruit when it is not the season for fruit to grow?
Perhaps He is telling us as His disciples, “I want your ministries to be fruitful in season and out. I want you to focus on spiritual growth. Make people matter. Be fair in your dealings. Be spiritual in your deportment. These are the lessons that Jesus is trying to teach the disciples, and maybe He’s teaching them that ministry and service will not always be based upon personal convenience.
Sometimes life will demand of you that you produce fruit even in off-seasons. That you learn how to extend effort and extend energy when you’re running on fumes yourself. That you show love when emotionally you are running on reserve. That you learn how to forgive people when nobody has forgiven you.
You can’t wait always until it’s the “right time” when God is inspiring you that it’s your right turn. Sometimes your turn has to be taken in the off-season.
