The Lord blessed us
with special weekend. He also blessed us with a super week of Vacation Bible
School. The church building and the grounds of the church were buzzing with the
sweet sounds and sights of the children, like little lambs in the presence of
Jesus the Good Shepherd, coming to His presence with spontaneity and innocence.
We had Sunita and Andy visiting us for a week. Laureen spent part of the week
at home. Jessica and Tom joined us all for the weekend along with our nieces
and nephews. We took a day trip to gorgeous Ithaca, where we walked alongside
the beautiful lake and up to Taughannock Falls. On one afternoon we went
picking blueberries - gallons of the them. We had a backyard barbeque one
evening. A small herd of carefree deer came by frolicking. What a scene it
was!
The Lord blessed
us with a wonderful day of celebration and worship in His house yesterday. The
VBS staff led the worship, with the lessons and songs of VBS, followed by
festive reception.
We are planning
for a Baptismal service this coming Sunday. It will be held at the Nixon's
Pond along Boswell Hill Road. The service will take place at 5 PM followed by
a special dinner reception at the church. We are also planning for our annual
prayer conference, to be held on 18-20 of October. The featured leader for the
conference will be Rev. Nigel Mumford from England. Rev. Mumford is an ordained
clergyman in the Church of England. We are expecting miracles, signs, and
wonders from Jesus our Lord.
In the light of
the prayer conference I was reading the story of a woman who was suffering for
12 years. Her story is recorded in Matthew 9, Mark 5, and Luke 8. This woman
had taken a real chance by touching Jesus. According to the law, her touch
could make Jesus unclean. However, because Jesus was the Son of God, His power
of healing overcame her uncleanness. She must not have known this when she touched
Him. What a crucial point this is. Our Lord Jesus was
not ashamed to be touched by the untouchable, and he was not embarrassed to be
publicly identified with the outcasts of this world. He was at home with
publicans and sinners, he ate supper with gluttons and drunkards, he welcomed
the prostitutes, he touched the lepers and, in this story, he is not ashamed to
be touched by an unclean person.
Jesus was
not ashamed to be touched by the untouchable. In fact, I think that he was
delighted, and
glad to identify himself with her. He must have been delighted that she had the
courage to reach out and glad that He could heal her. I am certain that He did
not care who knew about it, but rather that He wanted the whole crowd to know
what he had done.
It is an amazing
story which reveals the heart of our Lord Jesus. With our Lord there are no
“untouchable” people. In Jesus’ eyes, the untouchables become touchables. He,
by His divine touch, makes all untuochables touchable. By nature we all are
untouchables. All have sinned and have come short the glory of God. Jesus came
to seek and rescue the untouchables.
As Jesus asked,
“Who touched me?” the woman knew that He was talking about her. The Book of
Luke says that she came trembling and fell at Jesus’ feet. Then she publicly
declared what Jesus had done for her and how she had been instantly healed.
There may have been clapping and cheering all around. Before they went on, Jesus
looked at the woman and said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you” (v. 48).
The word Jesus used for daughter is unusual, and is the only time the gospels
record Jesus using this particular word. It’s a term of affection and
endearment, meaning something like “Sweetheart.” Then he said, “Go in peace,”
or literally, “Go into peace,” meaning “Go from this place and walk in good
health. You are healed physically and spiritually.”
Sometimes we men
are accused of not being sensitive callous and unfeeling. On the other hand,
the most
sensitive man in all history is Jesus Christ. No one ever cared about people
like He did. No one ever gave of Himself like He did. No one ever felt the
pain of others like he did. As He walked down a crowded street, hundreds of
hands reached out to Him, yet He felt the thin, sickly hand of faith. He
felt her touch, He stopped, He turned, and He spoke to her. He was not offended
or angry with her, nor was he too busy or too tired to bother with her. It is
mind boggling to think about it. He whom all the forces of hell could not stop
was diverted by the touch of a sickly hand! This woman did by her touch what
Satan himself could not do. She stopped Jesus in his tracks,
and He
spoke to her as if she were the only person in the crowd.
Jesus loves us as
if there were only one person in the universe to love. He hears us as if we
were the only ones speaking to Him. He attends to our needs as if we were the
only ones with needs in the universe. What a Christ! All that touches us touches
him. He feels our pain, sorrow, rejection, loss, failure, hurt, and grief.
Whatever it is that hurts us, He feels it. If it touches us, it touches Him.
This is what the writer to the Hebrews meant when he said, “For we do not have a
high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews
4:15). Thank God it is so.
We do not have a stoic Christ, nor do we have a
preoccupied Christ who is too busy to notice our problems. It is not an
unemotional Christ who runs the universe as if He were some kind of high-powered
businessman. He is the sensitive Jesus who, as the hymn writer says, “feels our
deepest woe.”
This story also reveals to us the amazing power of
even a feeble faith. The woman did not have a huge amount of faith, but she
had a mustard seed of faith, and through it God moved the mountain of her
illness.
This story reveals
to us that we need not agonize over the “correct” way to come to God. If we
come to Jesus Christ in simple faith - even though our faith be as feeble as
this woman’s was - He will not turn us away.
How simple it is
to come to Christ! Only a touch, and this woman was healed. It was not a
result of her toiling, nor by her promises to do better. She was not healed
because of an offer to do something for Jesus if he would do something for her.
No deals were cut. She merely reached out a trembling hand and in an instant
she was healed. It was not a long process, but happened so quickly that it
could only be called a miracle.
This is the story
of what feeble faith can do. Coming to Christ is not difficult. The hardest
part often is reaching out with the hand of faith. This is the power of feeble
faith when it is directed toward the right object. We need not have a strong
faith, but even a weak faith resting upon a strong object is enough. Who could
be stronger than Jesus Christ himself?
In
Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/ptsBk0KEFiE
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