Jesus Is Willing
Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Mark 1:40 (NKJV)
A leper came to Jesus begging for healing, and the first words out of his mouth speak so much to his life experience. He says to Jesus, “If You are willing…”
Do you catch the intonation of that? Do you hear the emotionality of it?
In those few words, it’s almost as if I can hear the leper saying, “I live every single day with people pushing me to the periphery. I am the nagging observation of everybody I come in contact with. Nobody wants to step into my malady. Nobody wants to get involved in the trauma that I’m living with every day. Nobody wants to extend compassion or sympathy. And I’ve heard about You, Jesus. I’ve heard You’ve caused blind eyes to see. I’ve heard that You’ve worked miracles. You probably wouldn’t want to waste time with a leper like me… but if You want to—if You are willing—You can make me clean.”
This man has been nurturing the fatigue that has gripped his life because of the way people around him have given up on him being anything other than a leper.
Verse 41 says, however, “Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’”
In those words, we can read Jesus’s empathy. “Your condition doesn’t change who I am. Nothing about your leprosy is a threat to me. The threat in your life is not causing me any angst or anxiety. The horror of your life is not causing me to flinch or fear at all. I want to get involved. It’s maladies like yours that I step right into and speak to until they give way to health, wholeness, and restoration. I want to help you, and since you haven’t given up on yourself after all this time, I’ll step into the fight with you.”
Friend, this is why you can’t ever give up on you. Jesus will never not want to help you become a better you. Don’t ever walk away from your aspirations, your goals, your dreams, and your visions—because you are in relationship with the Christ who says, I’ll never leave you.
As long as you’ve got fight in you, you can count on Jesus being in there with you because He wants you to prosper. He wants you to be more than a conqueror. He wants you to experience life and to experience it more abundantly.
Jesus will always be willing to help you.
