Soul Survivor: 'The Flood' Part 2Shembull

One Touch

Imagine having a serious health problem for 12 years that limited what you could do and left you feeling weak. Imagine it was so bad that you couldn’t hang out with your friends because they thought you were unclean. Imagine you spent all your money seeing a string of different doctors and specialists in the hope of things getting better but instead they got worse. How desperate would you feel?

That’s what happened to the woman we read about in Mark 5. You wouldn’t have blamed her for giving up hope after all that time of suffering, but she was a woman of incredible faith. She knew that she just needed to touch Jesus’ clothes and she would be healed. Just his cloak. She didn’t need him to pray for her or perform a religious ceremony, she just needed to get close to him. With nothing left to lose she fought her way through the crowd and, sure enough, as soon as she touched Jesus’ cloak, she was healed. Just one touch and her whole life changed. The suffering that had plagued her and made her life miserable for 12 years was gone.

Jesus didn’t let it end there though. He could have let her slip away back into the shadows but he sought her out of the crowd, asking ‘Who touched my clothes?’ Her response was one of fear. She fell before him trembling, perhaps imagining how angry he would be that an unclean woman had touched him, a rabbi. Instead he spoke kindly to her. He called her ‘daughter’ and said that it was her faith that healed her. Can you imagine how she felt? Her body was physically well for the first time in 12 years, but more than that, an esteemed rabbi, the Saviour of the entire world, spoke words of love and affirmation to her. That one touch from Jesus changed her whole life. In what areas of your life do you need to know the touch of Jesus today? Come before him prayerfully, knowing he loves you and calls you his son or daughter. Ask him to meet with you and change you by his presence.