Mark 5:26-30 Pressing Through

She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse.  She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe.  For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”  Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition. Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked,  “Who touched my robe?” 

Observation

This woman's affliction made her ritually unclean because of her bleeding. Based on rules passed down from the Israelites track through the desert, she was to be removed from the city, not knowing if it would spread throughout the city. She respected that and abided by those rules. She was torn away from her city, broken, separate and alone. She lived away from her family, and they weren't allowed to even speak her name. She was lost in the land of nothing. For twelve years she was exiled in this way, internally and externally. This woman hears about the Messiah and risks being stoned, beaten, and dragged outside the city again, all so that she can touch Jesus. 

Application

Can you imagine the battle of the mind she must have faced? Yet the desperation for change that she experienced was so much greater than her fear. Blessed are those who persevere, who press through (James 1:12). That is what she did, she pressed through, desperate for Jesus. If we were to see this now we would call it extreme, certainly the crowd around her then must have thought so. I bet if she would have shared her plans with her friends they would have told her to stop, maybe would have even held her back physically. She took one of the biggest risks of faith during Jesus's walk on earth. It is pressed upon my heart to not just casually read her story, but to really let it sink in.

Faith is risk. It is going against fear, persecution, affliction, and death for something different, for someone different. Faith is not fire insurance, it is a wholly and holy pressing past yourself and others into Christ for change. For most of us we can't make that faith step without first being in a position of desperation. Trials and suffering can cause us to do one of two things, isolate ourselves (which the widow was forced to do first) or press into Christ. I choose to press into Christ.

Prayer

Father, please remind me to press deeper into You through every trial, discomfort, persecution, or suffering that I encounter. Thank You Lord, for I desire more and more of You and less and less of me.