[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][fusion_text]By Rosie Moore.
This is one of our top devotions of 2020 published on the o3rd of April 2020. Find the full article here
In last Sunday’s sermon, Roydon Frost described faith as the beggar’s bowl by which we receive the gift of God. It’s a perfect picture of the three desperate people who came to Jesus for redemption in Mark chapter 5: A man tormented by so many demons that he was chained up and left to wander alone among the tombs. A woman with a chronic bleeding disease that left her ceremonially unclean, isolated and bankrupt. And the distraught father of a dying daughter. Yet, the Lord Jesus reached out to these two daughters and a son, and made them completely whole and well. By his touch, Christ became unclean and brought health to the sick, cleansing to the unclean, and life to the dead. He literally gave them their lives back.
These three interactions have really strengthened me in my faith this week. They’ve helped me remember that in these days of social distancing and isolation, there’s one person we must not stay away from and there’s one touch we all desperately need. It’s the touch of the Lord Jesus.
Please read the whole of Mark 5 on your own. We’ll focus today on Mark 5:24-34:
So Jesus went with him (Jairus, the synagogue ruler). A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed
The story of the hemorrhaging woman is wedged between the redemption of Legion (the demoniac), and Jairus’s little daughter, who is on death’s door. In fact, Jesus is on his way to the synagogue leader’s house to attend to the girl, while the teeming crowd is pushing and shoving to catch sight of the healer. Like keen fans, they’re hungry for a piece of the action…Keep Reading[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]