Only Believe

Scripture reading: St. Mark 5:22-43

It’s easy for us to trust in the Lord when things are going well for us and our lives are rolling along on a smooth super highway; but what about when we leave the beaten trail and find ourselves lost on some back dirt road, and the car breaks down altogether. That is when our faith is really tested, but that is also when we can experience the most spiritual growth. In the dark valleys of life, we find Jesus is the Lily of the Valley.

There was a man by the name of Jairus who lived at the time of Jesus and was a ruler in his local synagogue. Jairus had a 12 year old daughter whom he loved very much. This daughter had become extremely ill, and the illness had progressed to the point where it was life threatening. As her father fretted by her bedside, he heard that Jesus was passing through his community. Being at his wits’ end, he went to Jesus and fell down at His feet, pleading with the Lord to come and lay hands on his daughter so that she might be healed. Jairus had faith to believe that Jesus could make the difference in his little girl’s life. Jesus, in turn, was moved by this request, and He agreed to follow this man to his house.

We, too, know to go to Jesus when we have desperate needs in our lives. Whether it is for ourselves or for those we love, we know and believe that Jesus can make the difference. Like Jairus, we are relieved to know that Jesus cares and responds to our prayers and requests for His aid. What we aren’t often prepared for is the way that Jesus chooses to answer.

As Jesus and Jairus made their way through the crowd toward Jairus’ house, this desperate man must have felt a great sense of relief knowing that Jesus – this miracle worker – was on His way to touch his daughter. This is where things began to unravel in his mind, though. First, there was the crowd itself. Everyone was pushing and thronging Jesus, trying to get a glimpse, or even a touch. This certainly slowed them down and made it difficult to proceed. Second, a lady in the crowd, who had a serious need herself, touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was instantly healed of an issue of blood that had plagued her for 12 years. Jesus, sensing that someone had been healed, stopped to address this woman. This delayed their progress to Jairus’ house yet further. It was what happened last, however, that could have broken Jairus’ hopes altogether. As Jesus was still talking to the woman who had just been healed, one of Jairus’ servants that worked in his household came up and told him, “Thy daughter is dead: why troublest the Master any further?”

Beloved, this is when many of God’s children lose faith. When we have prayed and believed God for an answer, and, all of a sudden, it looks like the entire possibility of Him being able to do anything dissolves before our very eyes, that is when our faith can die as well. When our hopes and our dreams suddenly seem dead, that’s when it’s easy to give up and think that God has not heard, or there is nothing God can do now.

Abraham may have been tempted to feel this way. God promised him that his seed would be as the sands of the sea, and as the stars of heaven, for multitude; and yet, God waited until Abraham was almost 100 years old before Sarah ever gave birth to Isaac, the promised heir. His body was reproductively already dead. In the natural sense, the promise could no longer be fulfilled. Yet, Abraham believed God, and God gave him a son; and this story stands as a testimony forever to God’s faithfulness, and to the fact that God often waits until all possibility of our doing anything in ourselves is gone before He acts. He will be glorified. Read the story of Lazarus in John 11 and understand that Jesus deliberately waited until He knew that His friend Lazarus had died before He went to help him. He knew what He was about. He knew that He was going to raise His friend from the dead. He wanted the believers to understand that He was the Resurrection and the Life.

As Jairus stood there, we can surmise that grief was welling up in his heart as Jesus said to him simply, “Be not afraid, only believe.” To “only believe” is not always so simple though, is it? To God, death is not the end, but merely a means to the end. The things in our lives that we think that God has shut the door on, the things that we have seen die, He can resurrect. It may be that He has allowed them to slip out of our hands only to show us that they weren’t in our hands in the first place. Jairus’ servant said to him, “Trouble not the Master any further.” This is the point in our story where we may believe that there’s no longer any point to praying, or believing, or hoping any more for the thing that has died. We may be tempted to quit “troubling the Master.” I say to you, though, if you have heard from God and are praying for Him to move, and you see your promise die, do not give up. You keep right on praying and believing God for the thing that He has promised you, or given you hope to believe. Trust in the Lord and do not rely on your own understanding. He will be faithful and He will be glorified!

In the end, Jesus raised Jairus’ little girl from the dead. This may have been something that was previously beyond what Jairus thought Jesus could do. Not after that day, though! He knew from that time on that there was nothing too hard for God. Oh, how we need such faith today! He is able to do “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” We just need to set aside all of our fears and only believe.

But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.

– 2 Corinthians 1:9, 10