Heal Beyond Brokenness 2.11.21

Heal Devotional Series – Week 1 – Do You Want to be Well – Thursday - Pastor Mark White
Beautiful Desperation
Scripture Reading - Luke 8:42b-44 (NIV)
“As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.”

This woman has been bleeding for 12 years. Nobody could heal her. It says in Mark’s Gospel that she tried for many years many different ointments, potions, etc., and none of them helped her. They made her worse. In this 1st century Jewish culture, she was considered unceremoniously “Unclean.”  

She would have to do some ritual to cleanse herself after she stopped bleeding to be acceptable to society. After ten days, she could be considered clean. Nobody could speak to her, touch her, be with her, or acknowledge her until she was clean. Of course, in her case, the bleeding did not stop for 12 years, so she could not get clean.
 
She was a social outcast who desperately wanted back into society. We know this, because she tried many things to get clean. Mark's gospel says that it took all of her money, and she was at the end of the rope. She was desperate.  Not only that, in this culture, it was not just her who was unclean. Anyone who touched her became unclean. Anything that she touched became unclean.

For instance, if she sat down on a chair, the chair was unclean. If someone else sat on that chair, they would be unclean and shunned from society for a least ten days while they did the ritual to get clean. You can imagine how lonely she was and desperate for acceptance.
Let her story be our story.  Is your hurt affecting every part of your life, progressively getting worse, costing you everything, as well as an embarrassment? Are you desperate to be whole?
Let us come to beautiful desperation, where our soul pushes through all the noise and cries out to Jesus.