Luke 8:43-47 And a woman having a flow of blood twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians, and could not be healed by anyone, Came up behind Him, and touched the border of His garment: and immediately her flow of blood stopped. And Yeshua (Jesus) said, “Who touched Me? When all denied it, Peter and those that were with Him said, “Master, the multitude are crowding and pressing on You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?'” And Yeshua (Jesus) said, “Somebody touched Me: for I perceive that power had gone out of Me.” And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and fell down before Him, she declared unto Him before all the people the reason she had touched Him, and how she had been immediately healed.
Isn’t it interesting that of the multitudes thronging and pressing toward Yeshua (Jesus), only one really touched Him? What made Yeshua notice her among all the rest?
This woman was desperate. She had reached the end of her rope. She had probably spent all her money visiting every doctor she could find and done all she could do to help herself in the natural realm. I think she finally realized that what she truly needed was a touch from the Lord. The word “power” in this passage, in Greek, is “dunamis”. Dunamis is the word from which the word dynamite is derived. As she reached for Him, dynamite power flowed out of the Lord and radically healed and changed her!
Somehow, the world has us convinced that the solution to all our problems come from it! We tend to look to people and material things to satisfy our earthly desires instead of looking to the Lord!
Do you need a touch from the Lord today? How much are you longing for Him? Let’s abandon the ways we’ve been reaching out to the world for strength — and determine to reach out to the Lord in faith and believe!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]When I studied Isaiah 53 earnestly in the ancient Hebrew, I was taken back by the Hebrew word for “afflicted” (me-u-neh). In modern Hebrew this word means “tortured”. When I was young, and first learned what torture actually involved, my soul was shocked that this could happen to people; in fact that it was happening to people. That a person could be kept alive for the purpose of intentionally causing him intense agonizing pain was an astounding enigma for my young soul. It really frightened me; and I think that fear of torture is probably the greatest fear that humans can experience. We read about people who have been tortured, with a kind of horrified awe. And quietly we wonder inside, “How can this be?” And, “Could this ever happen to me?”
I love this story! Peter was sitting between two guards and suddenly an angel of the Lord comes to him and frees him — and he thinks it’s a vision! He’s not sure if he truly believes it.
“Exhausted but still in pursuit…” Well, now we know why the angel of YHVH addressed Gideon the way he did. With his small three hundred man army he had just decimated the army of Midian — but the victory wasn’t complete, and so the Jewish general and his small, exhausted, hungry, band were determined to cross the Jordan and take care of 15,000 additional Midanite enemies and their leaders, Zebah and Zalmunna.
His nightmares began each day when he awoke. James Stegalls was nineteen. He was in Vietnam. Though he carried a small Gideon New Testament in his shirt pocket, he couldn’t bring himself to read it. His buddies were cut down around him, terror was building within him, and God seemed far away. His twentieth birthday passed, then his twenty-first. At last, he felt he couldn’t go on.
On January 1st 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which proclaimed freedom for all slaves in the ten states which were in rebellion. At the time, when U.S. Secretary of State Seward took the document to the President to sign, Lincoln took a pen, and held it for a moment. He then removed his hand and dropped his pen. Lincoln turned to Seward and said, “I have been shaking hands since nine o’clock this morning and my right arm is almost paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.” He hesitated, then took the pen, and without wavering, took the document and boldly signed it!
For nearly 2000 years the Jewish people were scattered across the world without a homeland. In one day, according to the meticulous preparation of God, on May 14th 1948, the nation of Israel was restored. As millions of Jews were returning to their homeland they began rebuilding the ancient cities that were destroyed, restoring the desolations of many generations, and fulfilling Biblical prophecy…
As we celebrated Shavuot last night, we’re looking at the promise given 2000 years ago: that normal people will lead extraordinary lives; that disciples, who were terrified on the night of Yeshua’s (Jesus) death, were transformed into bold saints of God; and that fishermen, tax collectors, and housewives – normal everyday people – became empowered, and turned the Roman Empire inside out and upside down!