The Cross before me

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3:18

The message of the cross is ubiquitous in the Bible. There is the cross upon which our LORD died, and most believers can correctly point to that event as their hope of salvation.  We know that we were sinners, and so we all came down that sawdust trail, and accepted the finished work of Jesus Christ as the payment for our sins. We were all once lost, but now we've been found, we were blind but now we see. 

Great. Then what? Our consciousness has been awakened to our sins. Were it not so, why then would we have come to Him for salvation? We may enjoy a honeymoon period where we feel so close to him, but that soon fades. What are we left with, saints? The zeal for the new man is gone. The reality of life sets in. Sure, we are now in Christ, and one day He will bring us to Heaven. But doesn't this seem a distant promise? How then shall we live now?

Saul of Tarsus was "Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;". When it came to looking good, Saul had it made. But then sojourning down the road to Damascus, he encounters the LORD. His old life is shattered. He begins to preach the faith that he once tried to destroy. So far, so good. But he is far away from being the Apostle Paul. 

Off to the deserts of Arabia for 14 years, brother. Go make tents. How long until he begins to wonder if what happened was just an illusion? Listen to his testimony: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Saul cannot become Paul until he reckons with this very real struggle: Eschewing evil and embracing good is not easy. In fact, he writes, it is impossible. The accuser is right there. Maybe it was all fake, Saul. Go back to your old, comfortable life. You are still a card carrying Pharisee. Hiss. The revelation of the Cross awaits you, Saul. After much suffering you will be able to understand. 

After all that trial, Paul discloses God's objective: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: 

This is God's economy, what He does, why He does what He does. He has set Eternity in our hearts. We are eternal creatures who walk in a temporal world. This world is where we live, but it is not, and cannot be our home. Until we apprehend this fact and let go of the illusion that we belong here, our life as believers will be one failure after another. Not because God doesn't see our trial, doesn't love us, does not care that we are failing, but because there is a way life in a temporal world works. This is what the Cross is teaching us:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

After much trial and testing of our faith, every saint is brought to the foot of the cross wherein we must acknowledge that we simply cannot live the life of a saint until we surrender all and leave it there. One Christian prophet suggested that it is like a battle. When we are fighting in our own strength, we are in the valley. The enemy is raining down arrows of accusation upon our heads as we go from one defeat to another. Until we see that there is a higher place from whence we can fight. He calls it the Galatians 2:20 plane, the place where we are not vulnerable to Satan's arrows, because try as he might, he simply cannot kill a man who knows he is already dead. 

No, the battle does not stop. Our outward circumstances are most often the same. But now that we see that the battle does not belong to us, we set the LORD ahead of us, and He does the fighting. Our bodies he may kill, God's truth abideth still, His Kingdom is forever. Amen.       

Somebody touched the LORD

 And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague. Mark 5:22-34

There is a contrast in the stories Mark is relating here. In the first scene, we meet a certain Jairus. He is described as one of the rulers of the synagogue, a man of status and likely also of wealth. But he had a problem that no amount of wealth or influence could solve. His only child, his little girl was at the point of death. Having heard of the power of Jesus to heal, Jairus humbles himself, and comes to the LORD, asking Him to heal her. This is no surprise. What parent wouldn't do the same thing? Jesus of course went with him, along with a great crowd. 

The second scene, which is really a story within a story, is quite different. In that crowd, there was a woman who had been sick for 12 issue with a blood discharge. As such, she would have been ceremonially unclean, and anyone who touched her would also have been made unclean for a day. So not only was she suffering from weakness likely resulting from her loss of blood, she also would have been a social outcast. Not quite a leper, but nearly as bad. Like Jairus, her situation was totally hopeless, but I want to tell you folks, THIS LADY HAD FAITH! She knew if she just touched the hem of His garment, she would be made whole. Unlike Jairus, she doesn't ASK Jesus to come touch her, she boldly reaches out to touch HIM. Far from making our LORD unclean, when she touched Him, SHE became clean, healed of her illness. Of course, Jesus is aware that somebody touched Him. The clueless disciples said, "Well, duh", there are so many in this crowd. But they were not the ones Jesus was referring to. No, He refers to the person who touched HIM BY FAITH. He tells her that it was indeed her faith that has made her well. 

How many of us here could use a touch from Jesus? I think that would be all of us. But what do we do? Do we just passively pray, O LORD, please heal me, hoping that perhaps He will come to our place and make us whole? This woman did not do that. She went out and touched the LORD, and she went away healed. No passivity. BOLDNESS. Hutzpah. She knew what she wanted and was willing to go to any lengths to get it. 

Brothers and sisters, will we be so bold? What is our prayer life like? Do we just passively pray, like Jairus, hoping that someday He might hear us? Or will we be so desperate in our prayers that we will push through any unbelief or doubt, and make an effort to touch HIM? Jesus  makes it clear: Whoever believes, and does not doubt, receives the answer to their prayers. Let us then knock on that door, and knock again, and again, and again. When he opens the door, Jesus will hold open His arms, and give us the chance to touch Him. Don't wait till someday. Make today the day you touch the LORD.