Faith that Stops God in His Tracks

We all have different things in life that get our attention.

• Man – can be in a room somewhere and the TV is on and all of a sudden a sportscaster start giving the latest scores in baseball, or basketball, or my all time favorite college football.
• Woman – commercial for a romantic, heart wrenching, tear jerking movie.
• Teen – hearing one teenager talk about another teenager they know.  Phone goes off letting them know they have a text message waiting to be read.
• Child – goes to the store and instantly is drawn to the toy isle or gaming isle.

What about Jesus? What gets his attention?

• It’s a five letter word! – F  A  I  T H!

How would you like to have the type faith that literally stops God in His tracks?

• How many of you would desire to have a faith that you know gets God’s attention?
• A faith that turns God’s eyes toward you – even to the point of looking for you as if you were in a crowd and He was searching to find you.

That’s what we will talking about this morning as we look at a true story in the Bible about a woman whose faith literally stopped Jesus in his tracks and directed His attention toward her.

If you want to please God – if you want to get His attention – you must have faith!

Heb 11:6 Without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]

What kind of faith pleases God and gets His attention?

Fact is, everyone has some kind of faith.

• Even Atheists have faith - faith that there is no God, no place of everlasting punishment in the hereafter.
• Animals possess faith.
• Children in their parents.
• Sick people also display tremendous faith. They go to a doctor who took courses in school, a doctor with a name they may not even be able to pronounce correctly much less understand.
• He gives them a prescription they cannot read. They take the prescription to a pharmacist they have probably never seen before. The pharmacist gives them some medicine they do not understand and that cost an arm and a leg. All this is done in trusting, sincere faith.

So, what kind of faith captures God’s attention?

Let’s read together Mark 5:22-34

I want to point out three motivations that this woman had that caused in her a faith that captured the Son of God’s attention.

Note this from the beginning – many people were crowding around Jesus – possibly thousands – many were touching Jesus and rubbing up against in as we headed to this synagogue ruler’s home to minister to his little girl. BUT ONLY ONE GOT HIS ATTENTION!

So let me say it again – I want to show you and challenge you with these three motivations that developed a powerful faith that forever changed this woman’s life!

Her first motivation was Desperation

Let’s look at what this woman was dealing with:

What she was dealing with physically

• A disease with no known cure
• Suffering 12 years with this disease
• Doctor after doctor
• Treatment after treatment
• Instead of getting better she actually grew sicker
• She was bankrupt
• Through loss of blood – always in a weakened condition

What she was dealing with emotionally

• Disappointment after disappointment
• No doubt brought on depression, discouragement, frustration
• Loneliness – only companionship she had was that of her doctors

What she was dealing with spiritually

• The constant knowledge that according to Jewish law she was unclean.
• Leviticus 15:25–ff – blood disease—unclean—your bed, anything you sit on, anyone who touches anything you have touched.
• In our day we would not think it strange for anyone going through all this to have suicidal thoughts.
• The devil was probably screaming in her mind – why go on? Why live like this? This is all you have to look forward to for the rest of your life? Is it worth this?

Someone once said, “The mass of humanity lead lives of quiet desperation.”

• There’s people you work with who may be dealing with similar thoughts
• Kids you go to school with
• Children who see no hope in their homelife
• Maybe even someone in this service today
• Maybe someone listening to this message by way of the internet

But let me tell you this morning – I believe that without this desperation this dear woman would have never received her deliverance – her freedom!

• Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you will be willing to look up!
• Sometimes you have to come to end of your rope before you will reach out and admit you need help!
• Sometimes you have to hit that unmovable wall in your life before you’ll cry out in desperation for someone to intervene!

That desperation will make you a prime candidate for a miracle to take place in your life if in that moment of desperation you are pointed in the right direction ---

• Desperation puts you in seeking mode!
• Lesson: Seek help during trials

This leads to the second motivation in this woman’s life.

She had no doubt reached the point of desperation but now she hears and responds to a DECLARATION.

• Her first motivation was desperation
• Her second motivation was a declaration

A declaration she had heard about Jesus Christ

Verse 27 – she had heard about Jesus – had not heard Jesus personally nor seen him personally

Someone made a declaration about Jesus Christ to her.

• “Have you heard about Jesus?” “This man does miracles!”

For the first time in 12 long painful years a hope sprang up in her heart.

• Not a hope based on what she had seen but a hope and faith that sprang up due to a declaration that she had heard.

Lesson - We must respond to declarations made about God!

• Where do we find these declarations? – Here –Bible!

Not only should we respond to God’s declarations in our own lives, we must make declarations about Jesus Christ to others.

Let me ask you Christian – “Are you making declarations about Jesus to people around you who may be living in quiet desperation?”

• Are your declarations pointing those around toward hope in the Lord Jesus Christ?

This dear woman was in total desperation but then heard about Jesus through someone’s declaration and what developed in her heart next was what was going to change her life.

• What developed was determination!

She was a woman in desperation who through someone’s declaration then made a determination that she was going to get to Jesus no matter what!

So here was the place faith develops in her heart!

• A faith that would not have developed without desperation and a declaration.

At this point she is determined to get to Jesus!

She says, “This is it! It’s all or nothing!”

• She pushed through her physical pain – she pushed through her emotional battles – she pushed through the hopelessness of forever being one known as unclean!

• And with a determination she had not known for years she finds herself outside in the midst of a crowd who has no idea of her plight, pushing her way through to Jesus!

As she is pushing herself through that crowd of possible thousands she is repeating her declaration of faith, “If I can just touch the hem of his garment I know I will be healed!”

There may have been people pushing her back along the way saying, “Look lady we are trying to get to him too!”

But that does not stop her. She keeps on moving with the words on her lips, “If I can just touch the hem of his garment I know I will be healed!”

• She thought positively – “she thought to herself”
• Lesson – stay positive in your trials

To receive what she needed from God she was motivated by desperation.

Then she is further motivated by someone’s declaration which then motivated her with a determination to get to Jesus no matter what.

• Lesson: Press in to Jesus despite the obstacles

When she get’s to Him she is not disappointed!

Jack’s testimony

In desperation man meets Jesus

Jack was a man whose whole life fell apart in the span of about a year. His wife left him because he was a workaholic. His 15 year old daughter left home, his college age son dropped out of school, and the business he had built up collapsed around him. His business partner turned against him. And then on top of that he found out he had an advanced form of bone cancer. In desperation he sought out religion to help him through the disaster, but religion offered him no answer. He tried self-help books, but they didn’t help either. Then he started reading the Bible. There was nothing there for him either. Then one day he got to the gospels and began to read about Jesus. It struck him that the Jesus he was reading about was different from the Jesus he remembered from Sunday school decades ago. This Jesus was involved in the lives of real people, people experiencing divorce and separation, alienation and illness, disappointment and even death. In the process he forgot about why he had opened the Bible in the first place--to find a cure for the cancer. He found Jesus gradually become visible to him. Three months later when the cancer claimed his life, he was found in bed surrounded by notebooks full of all the things he had discovered about Jesus. And the remarkable thing was that when they gathered for the funeral there in the front row sat his wife, his daughter and grandson, and his son, and even his business partner. Each one stood to tell the story about how, in the last several months, their lives had been touched by the gift of grace through this man. Each had received a letter or a phone call. He had even in the last months of his life started to help an elderly woman who lived across the hall. She was house bound and each day he made some sandwiches and took them over to her. They chatted as they ate lunch together. She summed it all up by saying, “When Jack showed up at my door, it was as if Jesus Himself had come to have lunch. And Jack’s son spoke up and said, “There was something different about our Dad in the last months of his life. It was like you could see God in him.”

What are you in need of today?

• Have you reached that point of desperation or are you still being totally self reliant?
• Have you come to the point yet where you’ve come to an end of all your resources?
• Seek help

What kind of declarations are you speaking to those around you?

• Are you declaring Jesus?

I challenge you today to make a determination –

• a determination to stay positive 
• a determination to give your all to Jesus – your hang-ups, your habits, your physical battles, your emotional struggles, your feelings of spiritual uncleanness.
• Get to Jesus no matter what! You’ll not be disappointed!