“My gracious favour is all you need. My power works best in your weakness” (2nd Corinthians 12: 9)
We are staring at a new week where my father in law is scheduled to have a specialised surgery whose risks potentially affect the brain and carotid artery. Its a good week to thank God for faith and the many lessons in the bible that teach us how true faith can be quite irrational, outrageous, audacious, outright-odd-ball-against-all-the-odds…
There is a story told about a Gentile ( Syrian-Phoenician) woman who approaches Jesus and pleads with him to heal her little girl. There are so many things that are not quite appropriate about her and her request.
The first obstacle to her faith is that she is an outlier. She is a woman from a disadvantaged background. ( read Jews had nothing to do with Gentiles, they considered them unclean) She had all the prejudice and biases that accompany outcasts staring her down as she approached Jesus.
Secondly she had no propriety, no privilege, no pedigree that she could present to secure her request. All she had was a petition, a prayer made in passionate pleas begging Jesus to save her child.
As if that wasn’t hard enough to do, Jesus rebuffs her. He doesn’t deny her appeal, he delays her answer. He tells the woman that his mission at the time is to His own people. In fact Jesus response is a study in truth-telling. He indeed had come for his own “the Jews” (but they refused him) but he also foretells that there is a hopeful future for Gentiles who are predestined too to be heirs of salvation.
“yes, yes….I get that”…. the woman seems to say in her mind, but she is not about to give up the only thing she has going for her. …belief in Jesus ability to heal her daughter completely! Her faith response overrides the order of events that had been divinely established. She genuinely understands her hopeless cause yet holds on to hope in the Messiah whom she had heard so much about. Jesus graciously heals her little girl.
My takeouts; God responds to our faith in Him. Its impossible for Him not to. Faith will get you answers, indeed it will move mountains. Because God is sovereign ( He is free, not beholden to anything or anyone) He can freely choose to re-write His own plan, process and timeline in response to our faith. He answers prayers to change any outcome and still remains perfect in establishing His will.
God does not judge us by the labels we package ourselves in. He listens to us on the basis of what we believe of Him. If we believe him to be God, Savior, Healer, Help, no matter who we are or what we’ve done, the simplest act of calling out to Him receives the greatest reward of His gracious response. You will never come away empty.