God Is the God of Bold People

I want to invite you to turn to the Book of Mark, chapter 5, beginning with verse 21. I am going to flow completely in the Spirit this morning and let God direct me, and I chose a meditation that I believe will be a blessing to you. It is here in this account of the woman who touched Jesus’ garment, and I was reminded of this passage specifically for this morning because this woman, the woman with the flow of blood, is a woman who overcame obstacles. We are here overcoming a series of obstacles: snow, cold, and the mind and emotions that sometimes betray us. But we are here, and we have had to overcome an obstacle. God blesses that. God blesses a people who overcome obstacles, just as He blessed this woman through her ability to overcome obstacles.

You know the story. It says here in verse 22: ‘One of the rulers of the synagogue, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at His feet, saying, “My daughter is dying. Come and lay Your hands on her so that she may be saved, and she will live.”’

‘So He went with him.’ The Lord Jesus set out with Jairus to go to his daughter, who was dying, ‘and a great multitude followed Him and pressed around Him. But a woman who had suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years, and had suffered greatly at the hands of many physicians and spent everything she had, and had gained nothing from it but instead grew worse, when she heard about Jesus, came up behind Him through the crowd and touched His garment, because she said, “If I touch only His garment, I will be saved.” And immediately the flow of her blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she had been healed of that affliction.’

‘Then Jesus, knowing within Himself that power had gone out from Him, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My clothes?” His disciples said to Him, “You see the crowd pressing around You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” But He looked around to see who had done this. Then the woman, afraid and trembling, knowing what had been done in her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction,”’ amen.

Father, direct us now, and may it be You who preaches Your Word, Lord—first to my spirit, my heart, my mind, and my life, and then, Lord, transmitting Your truth to the lives of Your children who are here. We are all hungry to hear from You this morning. Open the treasure of Your Word, Lord, and speak to us, because we want Your bread for our lives this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen and amen.

Well, I like this passage. I like this character, the woman with the flow of blood. I like the desperate characters who appear before Jesus from time to time in Scripture: people in agony, bold people, people who do not care about anything else, people who want something and need something and are willing to overcome obstacles, to go against the crowd, and to overcome personal and physical limitations in order to attain what God has for them—desperate people.

I love desperate people, perhaps because I am desperate. I like people in agony because I agonize from time to time, and I like strong and courageous people because I have always tried to receive and live according to those words from God to Joshua: ‘See, I command you to be strong and courageous,’ because that spirit is needed in the Christian life. In life in general, you need a courageous spirit, a bold spirit, a spirit that rises above obstacles, a spirit that fixes its gaze on a goal and launches out in pursuit of it no matter what may lie in the way, and that remains firmly attached to the goal—desperate characters, characters who do not give up.

I want to be like that, and I believe that you want to be like that too. And you know what? Those are the people who please the Lord. Those are the people about whom God says, ‘Ah, there goes one of Mine. I am going to bless him, reward him, listen to him, move him forward, and grant him the petitions of his heart’: desperate characters, characters who overcome obstacles, characters who rise above difficulties, characters for whom their goal and vision are far more important than the sometimes arduous and lengthy process they must follow to reach their goal.

I think of this woman, who overcame many obstacles, as you can see here, and we are going to talk about some of them. But I also think of other characters, such as Zacchaeus. The Bible says that Zacchaeus was short in stature, and there was a great multitude, because crowds always followed the Lord. There were many who wanted what He had to give: healing, comfort, a word of affirmation. Jesus had the power and grace that the religious leaders of His time did not have—the dead churches of the Sadducees, the establishment churches, the ordinary formal churches. Jesus had the life of God within Him, and that is what we want: we want to go where the life of God is.

If you want life, do not go to a dead place, amen? If you want to receive the Word of God, do not simply go to a place where there are magical formulas and conventionalism. Go where the life of God is. Join with people among whom the life of God is present, because that is where you are going to receive. This woman—and the crowds—followed Jesus because He had something the Pharisees and religious people did not have.

But returning to Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus had heard about Jesus, and he knew that there was something in Him for his soul. He too overcame an obstacle: his short stature and the great multitude surrounding Jesus, which kept him from seeing Him. Do you understand? That is why Zacchaeus did something desperate: he climbed a tree. You know the story. He climbed a tall, sturdy tree so that when the Lord passed by, he could see Him, because Zacchaeus also had a need, just as this woman did. Zacchaeus was in need. He thought, ‘If only I could see Him, I will be blessed.’

How interesting, because this woman thought, ‘If only I touch the edge of His garment,’ while Zacchaeus said in his mind, ‘If only I see Him.’ The truth is that sometimes we need only something very small. There is so much power in God that one little touch, one look from Him, or a single moment with His Spirit can solve all the problems in our lives.

Do you know that you can go to a psychiatrist or psychologist for twenty years—and glory to God for psychiatrists and psychologists; they are necessary—and pay many thousands and thousands of dollars, but just one moment in the Presence of God can change all those emotional problems in your life? One moment in which you feel the touch of the Holy Spirit in your life, one moment in which there is a deep outpouring of tears and you surrender to the Lord your sadness, your resentment, your sense of having been wounded by life, and the pains of your past—if you surrender them to the Lord, that can completely change your existence in a single moment, one moment before the Presence of God.

That is why, when we pray, we have to seek that level of depth with God. When you have a need—if something is afflicting you, some need, some depression, some obsessive thought—what you should do is shut yourself in your room and tell the Lord, ‘Lord, I am not going to leave here until I feel that You have heard my prayer, healed me, and given me what I need. Even if they find my skeleton because I have not eaten for several days, I am not going to leave here until You bless me.’ Cry out to the Lord; weep before Him until you feel that your prayer has reached the depths, until you feel that something has come out from within you, that something is melting inside you, and you can attain the healing you need for your life.

Zacchaeus said, ‘If I could only look at Him for a little moment, that will be enough.’ But do you know what? It is when you do your part, when you pay the price, that God truly takes notice of you and blesses you. Many times God does not take notice of us because we are fainthearted in the way we serve Him; we are whiny—do you know that word? We Dominicans say ñoños. What do Guatemalans call a person who cries over every little thing, like children who cry? A crybaby? All right, we are crybabies. We are fragile. Every little thing frightens us; every little thing brings us down, and we seek God when it is convenient. On December 31, we make up our minds and promise ourselves that we will be spiritual giants, but a week passes and we return to the same old routine of every year: ‘I am going to go to church every day. Father, I am going to serve You. I am going to be a spiritual giant.’ And when things get tight and the boss speaks harshly to you, or they do not pay you everything they were supposed to pay you, right then you throw yourself on the floor and forget your good intentions, and God says, ‘I am not going to bless those people.’

Brothers and sisters, God is always the God of strong and courageous people. God is the God of bold people. God is the God of the person who says, ‘Even if it is only a little, I am going to take hold of something from Him,’ and makes an effort; and then God gives that person much more.

This woman said, ‘If only I touch the edge of His garment,’ and God granted her a personal interview with the King of the universe, Christ Jesus. Zacchaeus thought, ‘If only I see Him.’ Why? Because Zacchaeus had a wound inside him. I am not talking that much about Zacchaeus, but it is indeed an interesting comparison between these two people, because Zacchaeus had a wound inside him. I am not talking that much about Zacchaeus, but it is indeed an interesting comparison between these two people, because he too had a pressing need. I believe what Zacchaeus needed was comfort and to be forgiven by God, because he was a scoundrel. He was a thief, he was a swindler, and he abused people and his position as a tax collector. He felt filthy because he knew he had done wrong, and he wanted only to look at this man he had heard about, who was a man of mercy and grace and who told sinners that they could find peace in the Lord. And Zacchaeus said, ‘Wow, this man has something special. If I could only look at Him for a moment, perhaps something will happen in my life,’ and he climbed that tree.

Imagine what it meant for a man like Zacchaeus, who was a bold and greatly feared man. He was not that silly little fat man so many people sing about in that little chorus, ‘Zacchaeus, come down from the tree.’ When I was little in Santo Domingo, we used to sing it. Zacchaeus was a sinister man. Zacchaeus was a mobster, and people were afraid of him. For him to be seen up there, perched in a tree like a little boy, must have cost him his dignity. And when the Lord passed by and saw that man up in that tree to look at Him, He understood Zacchaeus’s heart—since He was God, Jesus, and He is God. He understood what Zacchaeus needed and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, come down from that tree. Today I must eat a sancocho at your house. Today I am going to your house, and you are going to make a good stew with steaming white rice.’ You see what I am thinking about, right? There is nothing like a good broth when it is cold. ‘And I am going to your house, and we are going to eat it together.’

Another beautiful thing—and I am talking more about Zacchaeus than about the woman with the flow of blood, but that is all right; it is the Word of God—is that they are both very interesting psychological types. I say that the Gospel has to be simple. The Gospel is straightforward. The Gospel is not about going around with so much holier-than-thou piety. The Lord was an approachable man. He did not go around saying, ‘I am the King of the universe; you have to treat Me with reverence.’

He said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, I am going to eat at your house.’ He invited Himself, and I believe that Zacchaeus liked that kind of simple, friendly, humble minister, and that was what touched Zacchaeus’s life. Let us learn to be like Jesus in that respect. To reach souls, we have to be unassuming; we have to be cheerful; we have to laugh at ourselves. We cannot take the Gospel too seriously. The Gospel is tremendously serious, but sometimes, with our holier-than-thou piety and pretensions, we drive people away.

Sometimes when people say a word and then say, ‘Oh, forgive me, Pastor; it slipped out,’ I tell them, ‘Brother, forget about it. I have heard worse than that—not from the brothers and sisters, but from the people out there.’ People should not have to be afraid of us, and Jesus was like that.

Regarding this woman with the flow of blood, the law said that if a person touched someone who had a flow of blood, that person immediately became unclean, and in a moment I will tell you why. But this woman touched Jesus, and He did not stand there scandalized because she had touched Him. No, He called her and said, ‘I want to talk with you. What is in your heart?’ We must be unassuming; the Gospel is simple.

The point is that when the Lord saw Zacchaeus, He did not think about his crime or his sin. Instead, He saw his effort. He saw his desperate effort to make contact with Him. He saw his willingness to overcome obstacles. He understood: ‘This multitude is preventing him from seeing, and this man is willing to humble himself in order to see Me. He has a need. I am going to see him. I want to communicate with him.’

Brother, God honors strong people, people who rise above obstacles. And do you know what one of the greatest obstacles is? Boredom and routine. I say that because I also believe that many of us are sometimes willing to do heroic things, but do you know what one of the great obstacles for the people of God is? We come to church Sunday after Sunday, and it starts to become something familiar; the same is true of Wednesdays. Then we begin, as it were, to underestimate its importance, and it becomes more like, ‘Well, if I can; if not, then not,’ and so forth. The same thing also happens in every other area of our lives.

One of the greatest obstacles to greatness, to serving the Lord, to preparing to serve the Lord, is precisely that: the ability to overcome routine and keep moving forward in discipline, to do things not because we want to do them, because it feels good to do them, but because they accord with God’s order, because they are conducive to spiritual growth. Discipline in the Christian life is very important: giving to the Lord, setting aside our tithe no matter what so that we can give it to the Lord, coming to the House of God and ordering our lives Sunday after Sunday, Wednesday after Wednesday, because it is good to be in the House of God and because it is fitting to worship the Lord. It does not matter what your feelings think; it does not matter what you feel in your heart; it does not matter whether you feel happy or not. You serve the Lord, you give to the Lord, and you overcome that obstacle. And the same is true of everything else in life. God honors, God sees the small gestures, and it is those gestures that no one else sees that so often uncover and unleash the blessing and the Power of God in our lives.

Those are the people who grow; those are the people who are blessed by God; those are the people whom God delights to honor in public: the person who does things while thinking, “No one is going to see me.” But God sees you, and God discerns your heart. No one saw the widow who gave the offering in the temple. What she was giving was a pittance, as we Dominicans also say; it was one tiny little thing. She was not giving much, and she thought, “No one is going to see me; that is not important.” But the Lord was watching her from up there on the balcony when she put in those 25 cents, and He said, “This woman gave everything she had, and I am going to bless her.” And look at us here, 2,000 years later, still mentioning her.

God honors the little things. What are the movements of your heart like? That is the most important thing in life: your willingness to give the Lord your best, even though perhaps you do not expect much from that gesture. But it is what is fitting and what must be done, and you are going to do it because it is important to do it, no matter how you feel.

Zacchaeus was greatly blessed; this woman was greatly blessed. Both had a great need, as Bartimaeus did too: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He says it ten times. Jesus does nothing; He ignores him, and the disciples and the people begin saying, “Leave Him alone! Can’t you see that He isn’t answering you? Don’t bother Him; that isn’t on His agenda.” He keeps shouting; he does not care, because he wants his sight to be healed, and the Lord stops. He heard him the first time, but He wanted to know how far his determination and his need would go, whether he was willing to keep asking until he received what he needed. Brothers and sisters, let us live that way every day of our lives.

Many times God takes time to answer us, not because He does not want to answer us the first time, but because He wants to teach us something; He wants to test us; He wants to know whether you truly value what you are asking for, whether you truly believe that I can do it, whether you are truly willing to pay the price for what you say you want, or whether you will let yourself be frightened by the first attempt that does not work out.

Brothers and sisters, God does not honor indolent people, people who give up too easily in life. There is a part that we have to do, and God will not do it if you do not do your part. A price must be paid for all the great things in life, and sometimes we think that God is a magic wand that, if you wave it or say “abracadabra,” the blessing will come immediately.

God does not want to raise parasites. If God gave us everything as soon as we opened our mouths, immediately putting the pacifier in our mouths, we would never grow; we would never develop emotionally. You know, psychologists say that if, as soon as your child, your baby, cries, you put the bottle in their mouth, the child never develops psychologically or emotionally. You have to let the baby cry and discover that the mother and the baby are two different beings, because when the baby is born, it is so physically attached to the mother that it thinks they are one single unit—and that is how it is. So, in order to develop psychologically and emotionally, the baby needs distance, and the same thing happens with God.

This woman had a flow of blood for twelve years, and God did not answer her—perhaps because she did not ask at first. She went to every doctor and did everything she could; there was no answer, but God had a plan for her. There are times when, because God wants to perform a miracle in our lives, He waits and waits and cooks it over low heat. That is one of the things about the Lord that bothers me, and when I get up there, I am going to ask Him why He did that, because many times He delays the things we want most and takes His time, while we are there being cooked over low heat and He is sitting there perfectly calm, because He has His own time for doing things, because He has His own time for doing things. And many times, through that waiting process, He wants to bring us to a certain level of depth, to a certain level of introspection, and prepare us to receive the miracle.

Many times, if God gives you the miracle right now, you will waste it because you cannot appreciate it. Sometimes He wants you to reach a certain level of maturity through waiting and then give you what you need, so that you can appreciate it, use it, and not squander it.

And the miracle was not only for her; the miracle was for us too. Do you know how many people this woman has inspired through the centuries with her example and her story? How many people have found inspiration in this woman’s story? She did not know that she was going to be a heroine in a narrative that would travel down through the centuries, and God wanted to prepare that miracle very carefully so that it would have all the impact it needed to have.

God wants to do things in your life. Perhaps what you have been asking the Lord for so earnestly over so many years, and which still has not come, does not mean that God did not hear you the first time. It does not mean that God does not fully intend to bless you and grant you the miracle. It simply means that He is waiting for the precise moment to give it to you, and perhaps He is testing you to see whether you are truly worthy of what you are asking for, whether you are ready, and whether you are willing to pay the price.

This woman had to overcome a great many obstacles. The law—if you read Leviticus chapter 15, I believe beginning with verse 25—the Mosaic law clearly said that if a woman suffered from a flow of blood—and what is a flow of blood? It is a medical condition; it is vaginal bleeding, forgive the expression if it is too graphic for the service, but it is something natural, isn’t it? She had a flow of blood, slight but continuous internal bleeding, and that weakened her.

A flow of blood had two terrible consequences. Number one, physically, it is like losing blood. Imagine a bucket: you set out a bucket and a drop keeps falling into that bucket; in three or four hours it is half full. That is what was happening to her. She was bleeding out slowly and continuously. She suffered terrible physical weakness; perhaps she was thin and yellowish and had no strength to work. She was incapacitated. Imagine what she could do in those days, without medicine.

Imagine the frustration that woman felt and, if she was married, the limitations she faced in her physical life. Terrible. But the most terrible thing of all was that the law said that when a woman was having her period, she was supposedly unclean. So technically, she was continually unclean, and anyone she touched was also rendered unclean through contact with her. Like lepers, she was not supposed to walk among the people, because she would make everyone she touched unclean, and it was against both civil and religious law for her to have contact with them.

So, for her to enter the crowd and make her way in—imagine this woman amid a large group of people, squeezing and pushing her way through and trying to reach the place where the Lord was—everyone she touched would become unclean, and if they caught and discovered her, she would be in serious trouble. But she did not care about that. She had a need; she was desperate. She had tried every doctor, and there was no solution. And she was not going to accept the alternative of living the rest of her life in that condition, knowing that perhaps this man had the solution. What was within her was a very great and very powerful faith.

And her faith, brothers and sisters—that is another matter. I believe her faith was not a perfect faith; it was a superstitious faith. She thought that if she touched the fabric of the powerful man’s clothes, it would be like something magical, wouldn’t it? It is like when, let us say, in our countries, you go to a sorcerer and they make something for you—a drink or a candle or whatever—and prepare it for you, and then you believe that if you touch it and keep it in your house, it will somehow have power.

It is like the Bible left open to Psalm 21. How many of us have seen that in our countries? You go into a house, and they have the Bible open to Psalm 21, and you ask them, “What does that Psalm say?” Psalm 23—and they do not know what to tell you. But they believe that if they leave the Bible open, smoke will somehow come out of the Bible and drive away the evil spirits; or they take a statue of a saint and turn it upside down so that the saint will grant them a miracle. Superstition.

This woman knew that Jesus was important, that He was powerful, that He was a marvelous being, but she did not understand the theology behind Jesus. She did not know that He was the Son of God who had come into the world to die for us, that His substitutionary death would give us salvation and eternal life, and that if she placed her faith in Him as the Son of God, her sin would be—she knew nothing about any of that. There were no pastors to teach her anything; there were no theologians. She only knew that this man had a strange power, that He had healed others, and that she needed healing.

And what does that tell us? It also tells us something else about God’s mercy. God is not looking for perfect people. God is looking for people of faith, desperate people, daring people, people who want something from Him and who are willing to pay the price and put themselves at risk in order to receive what God has for their lives. That process involves a great deal of agony and anguish, and that is why many of us do not launch ourselves into it. How many of you have a vision for your life and are willing to live it out until you see it fulfilled and to pay the price for it?

If you do not strive for something you truly desire, you will get nowhere. You will spend your whole life setting goals and never attaining any of them. Although this woman was imperfect and did not clearly understand who Jesus was, there was an intuition within her, and what God saw was her raw faith, the raw material of believing in Him and being willing to pay the price of overcoming the inertia of staying at home and saying, “Well, what if I take all these risks and nothing comes of it in the end? I will have to put on all these clothes, get dressed, and go through this and that, all for an adventure.”

What holds us back most in life sometimes is precisely having to break free from the inertia of zero and launch ourselves onto the road toward where we need to arrive in life. God is watching that every minute, and He decides whether or not He will bless you according to your willingness to risk something for what you want. What is your goal in life? What do you want to attain in life, or do you want to live your life simply improvising each day?

If you have a goal, are you willing to pay the price of living according to that goal every day of your life? Are you willing to go out each day and say, “Today I am going to draw just a little closer to that vision, because I believe that God is powerful enough to bless me”? And although you make mistakes, although you are not clear about what you want, although you yourself are imperfect, what God wants to see is that piece of coal glowing incandescently and throbbing within you. That is what God seeks: that we set strong goals in Him and that every day we go and say, “Lord, I come to present my need to You, day after day, day after day.”

Look at Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, and you will see those desperate figures who stood firm and did not yield to a refusal until they received what they needed. That is one of the great themes of all Scripture: the person who persists in pursuing their goals and meeting their need, who shows integrity, and who receives from God what they need because they even wrestled with God Himself. Jacob wrestled with the angel all night and said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” “Look, let me go; I have to leave.” “No, I am not going to let you go. I want a blessing from you. I want to hear those words: ‘I bless you.’”

And you know that the angel blessed him, but also dislocated his hip. It says that Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life, but that limp was a gold medal; it was a decoration this man bore, marking his struggle with the angel. No one else ever wrestled or will ever wrestle with an angel and defeat him. It says that Jacob defeated him because the angel had to give him what he asked for. That is why his name was changed; his name was changed from Jacob to Israel because he wrestled with God.

Are we willing to wrestle with God to receive what we want and what He has told us is ours? Are we willing to pay the price? Are we willing to overcome the obstacles put in our way by people, and even by the Church itself and by religion? Many times, when you are pursuing a goal, the first thing people will tell you is, “Forget about that, man; you have already tried too hard.”

The law here told her: do not go near Jesus, and she refused to accept that; her need was far more urgent than her fear and than the uncertain consequences of what she was about to do. And when she approached and came near the Lord, I imagine that she stretched out her hand as far as she could and simply touched the edge of His garment.

Did you know that rabbis and devout Jews wore a vest underneath their clothing with little fringes hanging from it? Four little fringes on the four corners of the garment—I think it is called a tallit; I do not remember the name—but they were little fringes with little knots at the ends in four parts of their undergarment, and experts in Scripture say that this was what she managed to touch, one of those little threads, but her faith was enough to activate the power of Christ.

And there is something else that is interesting: the Lord says that when she touched the edge of His garment, two things happened: she immediately felt that her bleeding had stopped, and she trembled; the power of Christ was that great. I wonder: if someone were to touch, let us say, one of those electrical units out there—you are driving down the road and you see some dynamos, those huge metal things enclosed by something, and it says, “Danger, do not touch this because it contains electricity”—why? Because they have electricity inside them; their nature is to be electrical. If you touch any part of that, if you come into contact with it, it will burn you to a crisp.

The Lord is power; the Lord is an overflowing source of power, and if we have enough faith—in fact, I believe words become unnecessary. This is one of the few miracles in which there is no word spoken. The Lord did not spit and put His fingers on her eyes; the Lord did not put His hands into her ears as He did with someone else; the Lord did not tell her, “Be healed”; the Lord did not say, “Bleeding, stop”; the Lord did not tell her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you, and therefore go; you are healed.” Nothing, nothing—only a touch, a slight contact, because that is the power of faith, and that is the power of God.

Did you know that we can dispense with all the prayers in the world if only we have the faith to believe the Lord? The Gospel is simple. I believe that the less faith there is, the longer the prayers are. I tell the Lord: help me reach the day when my life itself is a prayer, when I have such intimacy with You that silence is the best way to express my petitions before You. Oh, if we could reach that point of having such communion with God that words became unnecessary, that our communion with God would be inward, that from the time we get up until we go to bed our life would be a prayer, that the flow of our blood, the beating of our heart, the internal movements of our biology—everything—would cry out: Lord, I adore You; Lord, I bless You; Lord, I love You; Lord, I am Yours; Lord, I desire You; Lord, I want to serve You; I want to be Yours; be glorified.

May our biology worship the Lord; may it be in contact with God, because when it is, words become unnecessary. As our faith is perfected, we need fewer magical formulas, fewer long prayers, less sacrifice—simply being in direct contact with God.

This woman had faith—an imperfect faith, but a living faith. She touched that reservoir of power that was Jesus; she stuck her finger into the socket, and boom! She immediately felt a jolt. No one had to tell her or certify that she had been healed. She knew that she knew that she knew she had been healed because she had come into direct contact with the power that was Jesus. Hallelujah.

And the wonderful thing is that it was as though she stole power from the Lord—frankly, she stole power from the Lord; it has to be put that way. Did you know that God is mysterious, mysterious, mysterious? We have more power than we think to affect the heart of God. One thing I love about this passage is that it teaches me how important a human being is in affecting the heart of God and in bringing about things that God perhaps did not even have in His intention or on His agenda. I am not a theologian, so I can give myself the freedom to say scandalous things like what I have just said, because I do clearly see that we can affect God’s agenda through our prayers and our faith.

Notice that this woman was not on Jesus’ agenda. Who was? Jairus. Jairus was the ruler of the synagogue, the important man, the man who receives miracles. Who generally receives miracles? People with power. Bill Gates receives miracles; we do not qualify. God’s agenda is different. If you have faith, you can stand before the president of England, or whatever—France—because faith is the great equalizer. Faith makes the little ones great, and lack of faith makes the great insignificant.

This woman stopped Jesus because her faith was so powerful that it changed things. Sometimes I think about that. I said something this morning when we began the service, and then I corrected myself. I said, “Those of us whom God wants to be here are here.” I do not know whether you remember that, because people generally do not pay attention, so I would not be surprised if you do not, but I said it. I pay attention to myself: “Those whom God wants to be here are here.” And then I said: wait, that is not true—not necessarily—because perhaps there are others whom God called, but they are not here. And again, if you are watching me on the internet, I do not want to blame anyone or anything, but it is true! “Many are called, but few are chosen,” says the Word.

There are many people whom God wants to worship Him every Sunday or every Wednesday; there are many people whom He wants to be saved; there are many who could be great preachers or pastors, but they are not willing to pay the price. And so they remain small because they were not willing to attend a discipleship class, to go to seminary; they were not willing to turn off the television and read a good book. And so, the will of God—but why is that? Because God does not impose Himself on a person. You are important. You are not a puppet whom God manipulates however He pleases. He respects your freedom; He respects your freedom to bless you, and He also respects your freedom to let you be lost if you do not make the right decision in your life. He is not going to force you to do anything, and your heart can affect the heart of God. That is how important you are, because if you are willing to pay the price, God is willing even to change His agenda for you in order to bless you.

That is what she did. This woman stole power from Jesus; she stole power and kept it for herself. And the Lord stopped because He felt the discharge. That is why I say that we can affect the agenda; we can affect God’s feelings. The Lord felt that something had gone out from Him.

Look at how many people had touched Him. That is why, once again, Peter says to Him: “But Lord, how can You ask who touched You when everyone is touching You?” No, He said: “No, someone here touched Me in a different way; someone here touched Me with faith.” In a church there may be hundreds of people singing the same chorus, but perhaps four or five affect the heart of God because they sing in a different way. When you sing to the Lord, you had better sing to Him with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Think about what you are singing. Do not sing like a parrot, merely repeating empty words. Sing with your heart; meditate on what you are saying; think about what you have just said so that your faith may affect the Lord’s heart. If your heart is right, the Lord will listen to you as though you were the only person in the room.

I believe in that meticulous God. I believe in that God who pays attention to details. I believe in that God who discerns the difference between a minor key and a major key. I believe in a God who knows how to discern the slightest fluctuations of a human heart, and that is why we must please Him. Do not neglect God or take too many things for granted. God is a very sensitive and very careful God, and your life, your heart, your motives, the most intimate movements of your soul affect the heart of God. That is why you must live carefully before Him and make sure that you serve Him with all your mind and your heart, that you love Him above all things, that you prefer Him, that you confess Him before the strongest and most powerful people. If they do not like that, it is their problem, and God will say: “Here I have a child who prefers Me over men, and for that reason I am going to bless and honor him.”

This woman changed Jesus’ course, His agenda, His heart, His story, because she had powerful faith and was willing to pay the price, and she left there with her healing in her hand. One last thing, right? I cannot suppress this detail: the Lord did not allow her to leave feeling as though she had done something in secret, feeling that she was now returning to her ordinary life except that now she was healthy. The Lord wanted to dignify her because we have such a generous Christ. The Lord’s heart, so merciful and so special, moves me.

He did not want that woman to go back to living the anonymous life she had lived for twelve years—to leave again, slip away into the crowd, and return home without the problem now, to eat a can of Campbell’s soup because she had had no friends for the past twelve years. He wanted to bless her and tell her: “Look, you have blessed Me and have done something daring. I affirm your life, your faith, and your feelings.”

He stopped her and said: “Look, what was it that you did?” I believe He knew. I believe Jesus must even have known who had touched Him—or perhaps, because of His incarnation, in the mysteries of the incarnation, He knew some things and perhaps did not know others as a man; we do not know. But He wanted to have an intimate, personal moment with her, and He wanted to minister to her soul, to her emotions, not only to her body. That is why the Lord we serve is so—wow. I love Him more every day because He is so lovely, so merciful, so generous, so gentle, and He never tires of granting the desires of my heart in my life, even though I do not deserve it. He is a God of details, a God who grants desires.

He said to her: “Come, talk to Me,” and then, it says, she was able to speak to Him and confess what she had done. Who knows whether she also confessed the pain she had experienced? Who knows whether she told Him: “I have been alone all my life. I was desperate. I came to You hoping for one last opportunity, as my last resort.” And I believe that in that confession there was healing for her from all her pain, from all the indignity she had suffered. And the Lord touched her; He also healed her soul, healed her spirit, healed her emotions, healed her shame—He healed many things. God’s healings are manifold, and it will be done to you according to your faith.

Perhaps you are asking the Lord for one thing that is the most you aspire to, while God wants to give you the world. God wants to give you the earth. God wants to give you even half of His Kingdom, because the God we have never tires of blessing. It will be done to you according to your faith.

If you receive one teaching this morning, receive this teaching: you can affect the heart of God; your effort has power; the quality of your life touches God. If you are willing to overcome obstacles, you can reach your goals. You have a merciful God who loves you even though you are not perfect, and nothing can steal His purpose from you. There are so many wonderful things we can hear from this passage.

Perhaps this too: bring your needs to a white-hot intensity; bring your petitions to a white-hot intensity and ask yourself, “Are my petitions hot enough to affect the heart of God, or am I still only halfway there and need to pray more, cry out more, ask more, weep more before God, desire things more, be more fervent, be bolder, strive harder, honor God with my warrior’s heart?” And remember that no matter how small you may be, your faith makes you greater than the greatest of men if you believe the Lord.

Bow your head. Leave here with a purpose in your life: to reach your goals in the name of the Lord, to attain the highest you can in your life. Set goals for yourself; believe in great things; dare to believe the Lord. Your faith affects the heart of God; your faith changes destinies; your faith can change history; your faith and your effort can lead you to scale heights you would never dare imagine you could reach.

I do not care where you come from. I do not care about your family background. I do not care that you have not studied. I do not care if you are illiterate. None of those things matter to God when it comes to blessing His children. What matters is the condition of their heart, what their affection toward Him is like, and what price they are willing to pay to attain what they want in the name of the Lord.

Thank You, Lord. I adore You; I bless You. Install Your Word in our hearts; sow that seed in me—first of all, in me. Lord, begin with me. Create for Yourself a warrior people, Father; create for Yourself a people who rise to the excellence of the Gospel, to the tremendous calling we have received. Create a people who rise to the level of this sublime Word that You have given us, Lord—a people of excellence, Father, who believe You and honor You. We thank You; we bless You; we exalt You, Lord Jesus. Thank You, Father. Thank You.