…because she thought to herself, “If only I touch His clothes, I will be healed.” -Mark 5:28
The verse above is an excerpt from the story of the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5. We are told that the woman had suffered a great deal and spent all that she had on doctors, but her condition only grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she literally pressed through a very large crowd of people and came up behind Him and touched His cloak because she believed that she would be healed by doing so. She was immediately healed! When Jesus noticed that power had gone out from Him, He began to ask “Who touched me?” His disciples told Him that a lot of people were crowding around Him and many probably touched Him, but Jesus knew that faith had touched Him, so He continued to look around until the woman came, fell at His feet, and confessed. After hearing her tale, Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
In reading this story, what do you think the woman believed about Jesus? You see, our actions tell a lot about what we believe. When God told Abraham that his wife Sarah would bear his son even in their old age, he believed God, but when we later read that he laid with his maidservant Hagar and conceived a child, we can’t help but wonder whether or not he truly believed God’s word to be true, at least in that moment. God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of life in the Garden of Eden because they would die if they did. However, the serpent came and told Eve that the fruit would not kill her but instead, would make her like God, knowing good and evil, so Eve ate the fruit. What do you think she believed about God’s word?
I can continue with story after story, but the point that I want to drive home to us all is the fact that our actions are a reflection of what we believe. I have always claimed to wholeheartedly trust in the truth of God’s promises, but more often than not, my actions have proved otherwise. I remember praying about a situation one morning a few years ago, and I knew that God wanted me to do nothing but wait and continue to pray, but that was not good enough for me. I told Him that I believed He would work things out, but by the afternoon, I grabbed the wheel from Him and began to manipulate the situation. I lied and schemed and hurt a lot of people in the process, but at the end of the day, when I got home, a letter was waiting for me with the answer to my prayers. What if I had just waited? What if I had truly taken God at His word and believed that He would come through? How much pain might I have avoided? How different would my testimony have been?
I am not writing all of these to condemn anyone, but simply to encourage you to consider what your actions say about what you believe, and if necessary, bring it back to God as a prayer like the man in Mark 9:24 who exclaimed to Jesus, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Don’t just overlook your actions and say, ‘I am human,’ but instead, let God into the heart of the matter so that you can be transformed from the inside out. The enemy will stop at nothing to convince us that God’s word cannot be trusted as he did with Eve in Genesis, but we must, through power of the Holy Spirit, take up the shield of faith with which we can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. It is important for believers, if we are to live the abundant and exemplary life that Christ died for us to have, to take God at His words and believe them to be true, not just in words, but also in action.
What do your actions say about what you believe? If it is not what you want them to say, I encourage you to invite the Lord to help you overcome your unbelief today!
Grace and peace be with you.
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THE EVIDENCE OF WHAT WE BELIEVE