It’s About Faith {Part 2}

Last time you joined me, I shared about how the pain and trials in our life help grow our faith. Today’s blog post goes in a little bit of a different direction. It’s a word God has been showing me the last few weeks. It’s like He just kept confirming what He had revealed to me and I am excited to be able to share it you all! I pray that God uses this word to infuse you with hope today. I think this world is full of hopeless people and that makes me so sad because if we’re in Christ, we have hope! I heard this phrase not too long ago and it’s so very true! “We have hope because hope lives in us!” Our hope isn’t in our situations or circumstances, our hope in is the very One who lives inside of us…Jesus Christ! With all that being said, let’s jump in to the revelation that God so graciously gave me last week!

Mark 5:34 says: “And He said to her, Daughter, your faith (your trust and confidence in Me springing from faith in God) has restored you…”

“Your faith…has restored you.” I have heard and read this story countless time, but the other night when I read it…it’s as if those words jumped off the page at me. They struck me in a different way. Maybe it’s because of everything we walked through last year? I am not sure, but I am sure that the word “restore” means more to me now than it ever used to.

This story in Mark, you probably know it too. It’s the story of the woman who had the issue of blood. For 12 years she bled day in and day out. The Bible says that she spent all the money she had and also, “had endured much suffering under [the hands of] many physicians,” but she was no better. In fact, it says she was worse. How disheartened this woman must have been! How much suffering she must have walked through. My heart can empathize with her! Do I have the same issues she did? No. But I have my own struggles…my life has not been free from suffering in some capacity. So how do I relate to this woman? I can relate because I know that last year when it felt like there was nothing but darkness all around me; when my life had nothing but question marks on it…there’s one person I kept pursuing. It was the same person this woman pursued. It was Jesus! My heart screamed all last year, “If I only touch His garments, I shall be restored…” I knew if I got ahold of God like I had never before in my life, He would restore every broken part of my life!

I believe it’s our faith that makes all the difference. Do we really believe God is who He says He is? Do we really believe that if He could perform miracles for the people in the Bible, He can perform them for us, too? It says in the Bible so very plainly, “Daughter, your faith…has restored you.” It was this woman’s faith that facilitated her healing. It wasn’t anything else. She was desperate! She had tried everything that man could offer to help her get better, yet she was no better. She probably looked around at her circumstances and felt nothing but darkness. She had no hope to ever get better…but then Jesus came on the scene! She saw Him performing miracles for everyone else, and she probably thought: “If He can do it for them, then He can do it for me! He doesn’t even have to touch me or speak to me! If I just touch Him, I will be restored!” And she was!!! Her faith in God healed her. It says that the very moment she touched Jesus she felt in her body that she was healed. What a miracle! What a gift to this woman!

But guess what? She wasn’t the only person whose faith brought healing to her life. Two other stories found in Matthew also show us just how important faith is. Matthew 8 talks about the centurion whose servant had been paralyzed and was suffering. Jesus said that He would go to the centurion’s house, but the centurion said that Jesus only had to speak and he knew that his servant would be healed. It says in Matthew 8:10 that Jesus, “…marveled and said to those who followed him, ‘truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.’” And then in Matthew 8:13 it says, “And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.’” Another story found in the next chapter is the story of another paralytic man. In Matthew 9:2 it says, “And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” In all 3 stories what was the commonality? It was their faith! They all believed that Jesus could heal them and because they believed, Jesus did heal them!

If Jesus could restore health to those 3 people in the Bible, then He can do it for me…and for you, too! What needs restoration in your life? Maybe you’re not facing a physical ailment, but maybe your finances need to be restored. Maybe your finances are fine, but your marriage is in shambles. Maybe you struggle with some addiction…whatever your “issue” is, Jesus is the answer! If these people’s faith in Jesus Christ restored health to them, then our faith in Jesus Christ can bring restoration to the situations in our lives, too! Our God’s not dead! Our God didn’t quit caring about humanity the moment Jesus ascended into heaven! He still loves us! He still wants to work miracles in our lives! He still wants to show forth His glory in our lives!

Do we have faith that God can do it? Do we really believe that He is absolutely capable of performing a miracle for us? I think that we do! I truly do! But we live in such a microwave society that we have a hard time waiting on God’s timing. You see, He has miracles in store for us, but they most likely won’t take place on our timetable. They’ll take place in His perfect timing and in His perfect way. Recently, I was reading in Psalm and it was recounting a story about the Israelites when they were wondering in the desert. It’s Psalm 106:13 and it says, “But they hastily forgot His works; they did not [earnestly] wait for His plans [to develop] regarding them.” We get like that too, don’t we? We get tired of waiting. We don’t understand why God isn’t working things out how we thought He would or when He would, so we start trying to work things out ourselves. We stop standing in faith and we try to take control of the situation, don’t we? It’s a natural human response, I think. But take a look at what happened to the Israelites when they got impatient: “But they hastily forgot His works; they did not [earnestly] wait for His plans [to develop] regarding them, But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness and tempted and tried to restrain God [with their insistent desires] in the desert. And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls and [thinned their numbers by] disease and death.” (Psalm 106:13-15 AMPC)

Taking “control” didn’t end well for the Israelites…and it doesn’t end well for us, either. Maybe we aren’t punished exactly like the Israelites were, but we surely don’t get God’s best, do we? Restoration and redemption truly are things that God is absolutely capable of performing! I’ve seen Him do some amazing things in mine and my family’s lives…but not a single one of them has happened how or when I thought they would! In fact, I am still waiting for Him to finish this story of ours. I don’t know how or when He will fully answer my prayers, but I know one thing is certain: if I continue to stand in faith, He will see my faith and He will perform a miracle! If He did it for people in the Bible, then I know He’ll do it for me…and He can do it for you, too!