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One Touch At A Time

It had been twelve long years since she'd started this journey. Twelve years of trying to figure out what was wrong with her. Once this illness started, life became unbearably hard. People saw her as an outcast. She wasn't allowed to associate with family or friends. She couldn't be near anyone in public. She was wasn’t allowed to be near people - which meant she was terribly lonely. 

She tried everything. She tried every natural remedy. She tried every medication anyone recommended. She went to multiple doctors trying to find relief. But the only thing that brought her was poverty. She spent everything she had on trying to restore her life - the life she loved and desperately wanted to participate in again.

It's a wonder she didn't give up long ago. But something kept driving her. Something kept telling her this was not it. This was not what her life was supposed to be about. As she sat on the outskirts of the town, unable to mingle and be part of the conversations, she heard people talking about a man. This man was able to heal people. He'd healed blind men, lame men and even lepers. He wasn't afraid of the labels or the common beliefs about associating with those who were sick. And from the rumors, he was headed to her town.

She made a plan. It was risky. She was not supposed to be near everyone else because she was considered unclean. She hated that word. She hated that people saw her as a disease instead of a person. What did she have to lose? She had no money, no family and friends to support her; heck, they weren't allowed near her. She made a plan, said a prayer and waited.

Jesus did pass through the town and as always, there was a throng of people around him. They pressed in on every side. How was she going to get to him? They weren't going to part to let her through - she was after all a woman and she was unclean. She could be severely punished for touching anyone and making them unclean. At that moment, a man named Jairus came and started telling Jesus that his daughter was dying. The crowd stopped to listen. This was her chance. She dropped to her knees and crawled through the sea of robes and feet careful not to touch anyone. Her heart was pounding. As she neared to Jesus, she reached out. She just needed to touch him.

As she heard Jesus say "Let's go see your daughter", her fingers brushed the edge of his robe. She felt a surge of energy in her body. She knew something had changed and she quickly tried to back out of the crowd before she was caught.

The crowd stopped and Jesus said "Who touched by robe?" The disciples thought he was joking because well, everyone was touching his robe! But he was serious. "Who touched my robe?" Was there a no way to escape without being noticed? Terrified, she stood up and faced him. "It was me." And she told him the whole, sordid story. His response? Daughter (Can you believe it? He called me Daughter!), your faith has made you well. Your suffering is over."

As she stood there trying to process what just happened, she was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with relief, with unbelief, and with shock at what just happened. But there was something more. She was taken with this man. This man that had so much power and was in such demand yet he stopped to talk to her. He stopped to focus on her and to encourage her. She couldn’t really comprehend it all. What she did know was she walked away and headed toward her family was that she was loved and because of her encounter with Jesus, she was healed.

Adapted from Mark 5:21-34

A Minute In It - Does God Provide?

A little time in the Word every day changes you. Take a few minutes, put yourself in these verses and ask yourself a few questions.

One day the widow of a member of the group of prophets came to Elisha and cried out, “My husband who served you is dead, and you know how he feared the Lord. But now a creditor has come, threatening to take my two sons as slaves.”
“What can I do to help you?” Elisha asked. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?”
“Nothing at all, except a flask of olive oil,” she replied.
And Elisha said, “Borrow as many empty jars as you can from your friends and neighbors.
Then go into your house with your sons and shut the door behind you. Pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting each one aside when it is filled.”
So she did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars to her, and she filled one after another. Soon every container was full to the brim!
“Bring me another jar,” she said to one of her sons.
“There aren’t any more!” he told her. And then the olive oil stopped flowing.
When she told the man of God what had happened, he said to her, “Now sell the olive oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on what is left over.”
2 Kings 4:1-7 (NLT)

Have you ever been in the position that you could lose everything?
Was there any significance to Elisha using what she already had?
If you were the woman and you were told to do this, would you do it?
Why did the oil flow until there were no more jars?
When Elisha told her she could live on what was left, did that mean she could go out and buy a lot of new stuff? Is there a message here about God providing enough.
Finally, do you believe God will provide like this today?

Those Dark Days

Why am I discouraged?
    Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
    I will praise him again—
    my Savior and my God!
Psalm 42:11 (NLT)

There was a time in the past that I felt so discouraged. It seemed like every day had a dark cloud and that I couldn't see beyond it. It's hard in those times to keep moving. It's overwhelming to try to be positive, get yourself moving and believe that there will be a day that is better, a day that isn't so filled with worry.

What kept me going and kept me hanging on was God. During those days which turned into weeks, months and yes, a year, each day I would hold on to the promise that God had a plan. I would talk to him and he talked to me. He showed up in so many different ways. He showed up through friends who cared, through Bible verses that I would read that encouraged me, through circumstances that helped our situation and through music.

There is a great song out now by Casting Crowns called Oh My Soul. For some reason I woke up in the middle of the night with this in my head. I wanted to share some of the lyrics because if you are walking through a dark place, this song nails it.

Oh, my soul
Oh, how you worry
Oh, how you're weary, from fearing you lost control
This was the one thing, you didn't see coming
And no one would blame you, though
If you cried in private
If you tried to hide it away, so no one knows
No one will see, if you stop believing

Oh, my soul
You are not alone
There's a place where fear has to face the God you know
One more day, He will make a way
Let Him show you how, you can lay this down
'Cause you're not alone

Here and now
You can be honest
I won't try to promise that someday it all works out
'Cause this is the valley
And even now, He is breathing on your dry bones
And there will be dancing
There will be beauty where beauty was ash and stone
This much I know

This much I know because God is faithful. He walks with us through the valley and he draws near giving us hope and allowing us to breathe. Sometimes life isn't fun. It's OK to hurt and mourn and be lost - for a time. But as you are walking through it, keep looking for God, keep holding on and know that you will praise again.

Always On His Mind

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. Romans 8:26-28 (MSG)

I love how the MSG puts this text....we get tired in the waiting. Overwhelmed, tired, sad, broken, pick your word. There are times in life, maybe hours or days or months or years that it seems like we can't even lift our hearts in prayer.

Don't give up. You are not alone. The Holy Spirit is right there with you. God has not left you during those times. Maybe, just maybe you can't even utter one word in prayer. The Holy Spirit does it for you. Maybe you can only say 'Help me' or whisper the name of Jesus. That's enough because the Bible tells us that our Advocate, the Holy Spirit, prays for us. He takes our groans and sighs and gives them to God continually so we are always on his mind.

If you are going through a time like this, know you are being cared for. Know that you are loved and that God is near....right there beside you...hearing your heart.

Who Is A Person After God's Own Heart?

But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’ Acts 13:22 (NLT)

All these years I've heard and read this text about David. A man after God's own heart. And of course the next question that pops into your head (well, mine at least) is what did David do to make him a man after God's own heart. One thought is that he was always seeking God. But this weekend, I was reading this text again and for the first time I saw the line "He will do everything I want him to do."

WOW! Was that it? Was that why David was a man after God's own heart? Now we know that David didn't do everything God wanted him to do because of his involvement with Bathsheba, right? That was definitely not something God wanted David to do. He probably wanted David to be out on the battle field with his men or when David saw Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop God wanted him to go inside and follow God's commands.

David definitely did not always do what God wanted. Could it be that God is just looking for someone who is willing? Willing to put God first in their life? Willing to follow where ever God leads even if it's into the wilderness with no hint that you are even going to make it through? Willing to stick with it because God said not to give up?  Willing to trust God even though what he said would happen took over 15 years? Willing to confess and repent when he did something really horrible and turn back to God for his salvation?

It’s comforting to know that to be a person after God’s own heart I don’t have to be perfect. That’s not what he is looking for. We have Jesus to thank for that. What God is looking for is someone who seeks him and is willing to do everything he wants. What do you think? Do you think you can do that? I’m certainly going to try.

Musings About Fathers

Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him. Psalm 103:13 (NASB)

A few weeks ago I asked folks on Facebook and through email to answer these two questions:

What is one character trait you like about your father?
What is one character trait you don't like about your father?

I received quite a few answers! After reviewing the answers, I realized a couple of things. 1) Most of us could/would provide an answer for each question. 2) While we were being honest about our father's character traits, in most cases I could tell that not liking a character trait didn't mean that we didn't love our fathers, it meant we could see things we didn't like and loved them anyway.

This made me wonder about our relationship with God. Many people blame God for things and think he doesn't love them because things don't work out the way they want. We want the good from God but not necessarily the bad. Why is that?

I began to think about our relationships with people. If someone we know well, we've shared life with, experienced ups and downs and loved each other through it all does something to hurt us, we are more likely to forgive or overlook the offense. We are more likely to do that because there are memories we've shared, things we've walked through, we know the person really well and we know their heart.

I think it's the same with God. If we don't have a relationship with him, if we haven't walked with him and shared experiences with him, we haven't been able to learn to trust him. Trust is built through experiences and time. So let me ask you,

What is one character trait you like about God?
What is one character trait you don't like about God?

I'll tell you my answer. I love how intimate he is. He talks to us about what is important to us so that we can be in a relationship with him. And the one thing I don't like? I don't like it when he is growing me and he asks me to wait to see what the plan is.

Are you having a hard time answering those questions? That's OK. God wants you to know him so well that the answers will rattle off your tongue. He wants you to trust him so deeply that even when things go wrong you are OK because you know he's got this. He is taking care of it even if you don't know the plan.

It's never too late to build a relationship with your Heavenly Father. Never. Start by having a conversation with him. He's listening.....

Revenge Is Not Mine

For God is pleased when, conscious of his will, you patiently endure unjust treatment. 1 Peter 2:19 (NLT)

Many years ago, our extended family was on a vacation together. During that vacation we found out that someone else in the family had done something really wrong to one of our parents. It caused a lot of chaos on that trip and needless to say, that was probably the worst vacation I've ever been on.

During the uproar one of the family members said, "I would like to get revenge on them. I would really like to hurt them." They looked at me as if to say "What do you think?" Now, I am not the calmest person in the world and Lord knows I often say things I probably shouldn't but for some reason that day these words came out "The Bible says revenge is the Lord's." The person looked at me and said "Yea, but that will take too long."

For some reason this has stuck in my head all these years. She was right. God's timing is often more elongated than ours. We want results now. And, I totally understand the revenge thing. It's not in our human nature to overlook something. We want to retaliate and retaliate quickly. But, we are not called to live according to our human nature. We are called to live according to Christ's nature. Once we accept him as Savior and Lord, our thinking needs to change. We need to be changed from the inside out.

Today's Bible verse reminded me of the vacation story and it reminded me as to why we as Christians should not seek revenge. Always, foremost in our thinking should be the question "What does God want?" If I retaliate against the person who hurt me, if I seek revenge, hold a grudge or say all the things that have popped into my head, how will I represent Jesus? Will I bring glory and honor and a true representation of Jesus if I behave as myself?

I think the key in 1 Peter 2:19 is the words "conscious of his will." Always, no matter what is going on in our lives, we always need to be conscious of his will.

““God can’t give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing.”
― C.S. Lewis”