The Making of a Minister of Grace

And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for about 12 years, and had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and had grown worse not better. She heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind Him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch his garment, I will be made well." And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she had been made well. And Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him immediately turned around and said, "Who touched me?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in around you and yet you ask who touched me ?" And Jesus looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had been done for her, came in fear an trembling and fell down at his feet and told the whole truth. And he said to her, " daughter go in peace, your faith has made you well, be healed of your disease." Mark: 25-34

This woman must have been a woman of means to have had money to spend on physicians, but now she was all spent. Sometimes it is good to be all spent for then you have only one place to go, Jesus.

This woman was a woman of faith, her desperation opene the door to the truth about Jesus being Lord over all disease.

Yet, when Jesus wanted to know who it was who touched him and would not move on without knowing, she came in fear and trembling. Why was she in fear? Had the treatment from others in her world over the last 12 years caused her to see herself as nothing? An outcast? In her day her condition required her to be separated from the community until the bleeding stopped but it did not stop. This woman's heart would carry deep wounds from her isolation and ostracization, she would not bounce back like before. 

Deep wounds allow us to fill the deep hollows with our Lord's presence or bitterness. This woman was not bitter and now she was full of life. What a change, what a blessing she could now be to the broken in her community. Amen!