Have you HEARD of Jesus?

And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? Mark 5:25-30.

I love this story of the woman who suffered a female bleeding disorder for twelve years but had the audacity to believe her condition would not disqualify her from being healed. In biblical times, under the Mosaic Law, this woman could have been stoned for pressing into a crowd of supposed righteous people and infecting them with her spiritual and physical uncleanness. And then to make matters worse, she had the nerve to touch a holy rabbi! In their minds, she suffered because of some undisclosed, secret sin or generational curse. Doctors would never be able to heal her, and no amount of money could buy her out of her situation – she was doomed to suffer until she atoned for her obvious sin. What self-righteous Jewish man would ever marry her? She certainly would never be able to bear children. She was a rejected outcast who many feared because her “uncleanness” might be catching. What a horrible fate!

Like the Jews of her day, many of us Christians sitting in denominational churches have been told time and again by many well-meaning pastors and bible study teachers that we, like this woman, must first become “clean” before we can approach a holy God. They say we must confess our myriad sins first and “get right” with God before we could ever approach His holy presence to ask for healing. Just recently, my husband accompanied me to a local healing service, but when he came forward for prayer, he was told he could not be healed because he had unforgiven sin, unconfessed sin, and unforgiveness toward others! If these prayors had lived in this woman’s day, I’m sure they would have strong-armed her to the ground and given her a good lecture on sin before she had a chance to defile the righteous Jesus. When are we Christians going to wake up and reject this kind of teaching?

Answer: like this woman, it will be when we hear about Jesus! But don’t we hear about Jesus every week at church? I don’t know – do you? What do you think this poor woman heard about Jesus? Did she hear that He made everyone confess their sins and go through a long forgiveness list before receiving healing? Did she believe she had to be perfect before approaching Him? She was certainly imperfect for breaking the law by even being in public, much less touching the hem of a holy rabbi’s garment. No, she must have heard about a different Jesus, a Jesus who had mercy and compassion and went about healing all those afflicted by the devil, because God was with Him. (Acts 10:38).

She KNEW He would heal her because of all the good things she had heard about Him – healing the leprous man, the man born blind, casting out a legion of devils out of the mad man who lived in the catacombs of Gadara. In fact, she had so much faith in Jesus’s power to heal that she merely said to herself, “If I can just touch His clothes, I shall be well.” She risked the public scrutiny of her fellow Jews, the chance that she might be kicked and spit upon, that she might be chastised and forever expelled from the synagogue, that they might pick up stones and kill her for making a public profession that what Jesus presented was TRUTH and what she had been taught for years was a lie. Her persistence in pressing through for healing was a public profession of faith that He could and would do what the law could not and never would be able to do.

Fortunately for us, her story has been preserved in the Word as a lesson for us. Jesus warned us not to be deceived in the last days. There will be many false teachings in our midst, telling us that our sins are our problem, when He took all our sins away 2000 years ago on the cross! If this sweet Jewish woman was instantly healed by her dogged faith that enabled her to take from Jesus, how much more should we who are born again IN HIM after the cross and the resurrection press in and likewise take our healing? Selah – think about it!