Sufficient Faith

Sufficient Faith

Mark 5:21-34

21 Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake, where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. 22 Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, 23 pleading fervently with him. “My little daughter is dying,” he said. “Please come and lay your hands on her; heal her so she can live.”

24 Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him. 25 A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. 26 She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. 28 For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

30 Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”

31 His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

32 But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”

Let me begin my message today by asking you a question: Does your faith remove mountains or do your mountains remove your faith? F.B. Meyer once said that “unbelief puts our circumstances between us and God, but faith puts God between us and our circumstances.”

Today we’re going to see what faith can do for a person when it is a biblically applied faith, brought to Jesus Christ.

God is our Source and His supplies do not run out! He is not bankrupt.

He’s not in a depression. He doesn’t even know what inflation is. And He’s ready to meet some of the needs that are represented within the body of Christ. But the channel or vessel for us to receive from God is our faith!

James wrote, “We have not because we ask not” (James 4:2,KJV). Often we ask not because we believe not. But when we have faith enough to ask of Him, then miracles begin to take place.

True biblical faith, when it is real, begins to change us, which in turn, stirs us to action, which brings us to God.

Let’s look at the determination of the lady’s faith as found in our scripture passage. Verse 25 and 26 says, “A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse.”

Now Jesus is on His way to restore the health of a 12-year-old girl. And there’s a great crowd that’s following Him. They’re going to watch Him. And within that crowd I know there were those who just believed He could do it. There were also skeptics and those who were probably saying, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

But there was one person in that crowd who was following Jesus, not to see what He was going to do for someone else, but to see what He was going to do for her!

Let me stop right here and ask you another question: As you came into the service today, what did you expect might happen? Did you think that perhaps God would be here in a general sense and touch our lives in a general way, and answer our prayers in a general way, and bless us in a general way, and listen to a sermon that applies to all of us in a general sense and walk out of here believing that God has met our needs in a general sense?In other words, did you come today to see a general Savior or a personal Savior?

This lady in the crowd was not the only person who had a need. In any collection of people, there will always be at least as many needs as there are people. Yet, there was only one person that day who had enough faith to do anything about her need.