Desperation and Faith

This morning I’m considering the story in Luke 8 about the woman who had the debilitating problem of a chronic flow of blood that had lasted twelve years. Luke’s text tells us that she had seen every physician she could find, had spent literally all her money on the search for a medical solution, and had come up empty, both financially and physically.

Somehow, this woman hears that Jesus is in town. The gossip had spread, the word had gotten around that He was a healer, maybe the Messiah, and that amazing things seemed to happen whenever He showed up. So, she decided to go and see if she could encounter Him, and what might occur if she did.

This is where the story gets interesting to me. What kinds of emotions and thought processes were at work in this woman? Twelve years of unrelenting physical difficulty, weakness due to blood loss, despair due to economic impact, embarrassment at being in public with such a malady – all of these factors play into her decision to try to see Jesus. In a word, her situation was one of desperation. She had run out of options, and He was her one remaining hope.

It was under those circumstances that faith rose up in her heart, although I doubt that it felt like faith. My guess is that it felt more like the ragged despair of an “I’ll try just one more thing” reality, and that any feelings of confidence and positivity were off in the distance somewhere.

Her desperation caused her to force her way through the crowd, getting just close enough to touch the tassels attached to the hem of Jesus’ garment. Perhaps her thought was that if Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of Righteousness might indeed have healing in His “wings,” the picture Malachi painted so many years before as he spoke of the One the nation was looking for.

It worked. She touched His robe, power flowed out, and Jesus noticed. He turned to find her, and listened as she told the story of her desperate attempt to encounter Him. Jesus then declared that it was her faith that healed her, and she could now be cheerful, for her issue was resolved.

Desperate faith. Faith that will not be denied because there are no other options. Maybe – if we want greater faith – we’ll need to realize that the other options aren’t working that well, allow hunger and thirst for the Kingdom of God to grow, and approach Him with the desperation that He calls “faith.” Maybe then we’ll see what we say we want.

Gary Wiens

The Boldness of Standing in the Truth

This morning I’m gazing at the account in Luke 4 in which Jesus, in front of His hometown folks, read the prophecy of Isaiah 61 and applied it to Himself, declaring that on that day the prophecy was fulfilled. I read that passage from the perspective of 2000 years of history, a theological conviction that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, and that He absolutely spoke the truth in that moment. No problem, right?

What is harder to get hold of is that in that moment, Jesus was saying these things as a man filled with and led by the Holy Spirit, in the context of people who didn’t believe Him because they knew Him from childhood, one of the kids from the neighborhood, the son of Joe and Mary (and conceived illegitimately, too!). His boldness and confidence in saying what He said had to be rooted in something deeper than the opinions of the people around Him. Jesus had to know the voice of His true Father, the God of Heaven and earth, and He had to define Himself by that voice and no other. Only then could He make bold statements about Himself that appear to be fantastically egotistical, unless they are true.

Here’s the point for you and me: what are we saying about ourselves and our relationship to the purposes of God in our lives, the reasons for which we are filled with and anointed by the Holy Spirit? Who are you, and who am I, in God’s opinion? If we are going to stand in bold truth, and accomplish that for which we have been called and saved, we need to be settled in what God says, and not trying to find our identity and destiny in the opinions of others.

Paul the apostle said it in Philippians 3: “I want to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus laid hold of me!” In other words, Paul wanted to find out what was in God’s mind when He conceived of his life. What was the story God was writing that would be played out on the earth through the life of Paul? That was Paul’s goal, to fully discover the truth that enabled him to live boldly in the face of contrary opinion and opposition throughout his life.

Here’s the challenge – let us go before God in the confidence provided by Jesus’ finished work on our behalf, and hear what He has to say concerning us, you and me. Let us eliminate any other opinion from our self-definition that does not agree with what God says. And then, let us dare to stand boldly and declare, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, and He has anointed me to …” Then, fill in the blanks concerning what God has given you to do, and, standing boldly in that truth, go do your assignment in the grace and power of His presence upon you.

She Did What She Could

I’m meditating this morning on the story in Mark 14:3-9 in which a woman ignores all the social conventions of the day and anoints Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume. Several things in this story touch my heart today.

First, the woman is not named. She is simply someone who loved Jesus, and valued Him above anyone’s opinion, or above the reality of her own material needs. Nothing was more important to her than loving and honoring Jesus, regardless of the cost or any negative implications concerning her. I find that I’m considerably less ardent in the expressions of my love for Him, and way too concerned about things that really don’t matter, like the imagined opinions of people I may not even know.

Second, this was a costly act. The perfume poured out was worth a year’s wages, a lot of money especially for a minimum-wage laborer. That sort of emotionally motivated expression of love is offensive to the mind, because it explodes the concept of common sense. Our minds recoil and our hearts shudder when someone is so effusive in expressing love to such a degree that our own lack of love is exposed. We struggle to find reasons to argue with the over-done outpouring, such as “she should have given it to the poor.” These arguments likely are nothing more than a cover-up for hearts that are too small.

The third thing is that Jesus is probably the only one in the room who knows this woman, and is in touch with what motivates her. To Him, she’s not just a profligate street walker with no sense of appropriate boundaries. To Jesus, this woman is someone motivated by the Spirit of God to anoint Him in preparation for His death and burial. Jesus’ declaration of blessing over her assures that, even nameless, she will be remembered forever.

I want a bigger heart. The one I have now is too small to pour out love like that, without concern for the consequences. If the most important commandment is to love Him with everything I am and have, then my prayer must be this: “Oh, Holy Spirit, carve out more space in my heart! Open my eyes wider to the beauty of this Man, and let the fragrance of my love fill the room. If that means I look foolish, so be it, for You alone are worthy of such a pouring out.”

Gary Wiens