My husband is one of the most hardworking men I know. He makes no excuses and often his drive is out of desperation. Not desperation of embarrassment. No, not desperation stemmed from envy, jealousy, greed, or pride. Rather a desperation that is rooted in giving his best yes in what he’s set out to do and what God has called him to do. An excuse is not a part of his vocabulary. It’s not even an option. He gets up each morning desperate, knowing every second wasted will shift the trajectory of our future. You can say I admire him. His desperation has motivated and challenged me to remove the excuses from my vocabulary and truly live out what the action of faith looks like.
One of my top Bible passages is about a woman who bled for 12 years. We are not told of her name. We are not even told much of her other than she had continual bleeding for 12 years and had spent all her money on treatments from many doctors with no prevail. In Jewish law, this continual bleeding or menstruating woman was viewed as ceremonially unclean. In order to be regarded as clean, the flow of blood would need to stop for at least 7 days.
Being ceremonially unclean, this unnamed woman would not have been permitted to enter the temple for Jewish religious ceremonies. Following the Jewish Law, due to her illness, anything or anyone she touched became unclean as well. This occurred for 12 years. For a female who has her monthly cycle, I can understand the pain of bleeding, however, this bleeding only lasts for 5-7 for most women. Bleeding continually for 12 years, coupled with the pain this brings along with the deficiency from losing nutrients in your body, and your own people shunning you I could hardly understand, or comprehend what this woman went through. This unnamed woman was desperate. She was so desperate that for 12 years she saught help. She was so desperate that despite being viewed ceremonially unclean, she pushed herself through the crowd pressing around Jesus. Did she believe Jesus as the Messiah? We aren’t told. Either way, she was desperate. So much so that she believed in faith that if she only touched the hem of Jesus’ clothes she would be healed.
In Mark 5, we read that as soon as the woman touches Jesus’ clothes, her bleeding stops and she knows she’s been healed. In an instant, Jesus does what no doctor in twelve years had been able to. Jesus’ response to the woman touching his garment was, “Who touched my clothes?” People were pushing and pressing into Him from all over, yet He stops, turns, and asks, “Who touched my clothes?” Even the disciples thought Jesus’ questioning was a bit outrageous seeing that the crowd was heavy surrounding them, but Jesus knew that healing power had gone out of Him. Jesus tells the woman her faith had healed her. She didn’t steal a miracle from God, but she was desperate for change that she was willing to believe an unknown healing to a known God. The woman had her complete and instantaneous healing. She was desperate.
I wonder if you are desperate or simply believe you are only that you are filled with excuses. I wonder if the catalyst for change lies not in your outward circumstances changing, rather in the way you think, utilize your time and what you speak over your life. I wonder if you just aren’t desperate enough.
This isn’t a healing blog. Far from it. Rather this is targeting the lackadaisical nature of humans who want results with no effort. We have all the excuses as to why we haven’t seen change. Yes, I get there are things out of our control, but there’s quite a bit in our control. Every decision you make produces some type of result. For the majority of us, our lack of decision-making produces no results. Our lack of desperation, our lack of foresight, our lack of hope has us stuck living the same year every year filled with all the wishful thinking and no results to show for it.
Where hope exists, the ability to succeed, the ability for change, the ability to amaze oneself is present. When we are desperate, we don’t live for the moment, rather we live for the moments to come. When we are desperate, we don’t drag our feet hoping things will work out, rather we utilize what’s in our hands as a means for change. We see that God is good and in His goodness he has equipped us with everything we need. We were born with talents and gifts. We were born with knowledge and the ability to inspire. Too often we are not desperate enough to walk out what we’ve been given. I wonder if only we had faith like the woman who bled for 12 years what we can do. I wonder…
Are you desperate?