Your Faith Has Saved You. - This month, we want to look at the greeting he gave to four special people who walked through that door: “Your faith has saved you.” These people are a blind man named Bartimaeus (Mark 10:52), a woman with a serious medical condition (Matthew 9:22), a Samaritan who was healed of leprosy (Luke 17:19), and a woman with a sinful past (Luke 7:50). We want to see how they walked through that door, and what Jesus offered them on the other side. Who knows? Maybe their stories will help us as we walk through our own doors of faith every day! One of the first things that we can see in each of these stories is the way Jesus singled these people out and honored their faith and trust—often in contrast to the others around him who didn’t seem to show the same kind of faith. It seems that the kind of faith that draws Jesus’ attention is the faith that causes people to reach out to him. It moves people to go out of their way and maybe even cause a scene. People with this kind of faith may be looking for a specific healing at first, but something else happens to them along the way. Their hearts are healed, not just their bodies. Their memories are healed, not just their sense of guilt over past sins. So as you look at each of these stories, ask yourself, “Does my faith move me to reach out to Jesus? What do I find when I do reach out in the that way these people did?”
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 19:07:57 +0000