The Mark 5 Woman (Pastor Ron Termale) November 14, 2021
In Mark 5:21-34, a woman with an issue of blood pressed through a large crowd, touched Jesus’s cloak, and was healed of her condition. Like her, we also need to be hungry to grab hold of a touch from God.
The story is a story of communion. The woman and Jesus had an intimate spiritual exchange, where her faith was engaged and His divine power was released.
The story is also about Jesus’s availability to every single person and the value that they have to Him. In the story, Jesus was on His way to heal the daughter of one of the synagogue leaders named Jairus, someone who would have had more access to Jesus given his position, but Jesus stopped the entire crowd to pronounce the woman’s healing for having the faith to touch Him. The attention and acceptance that Jesus showed the woman is significant because she would have been considered unclean and thus socially shunned in Jesus’s day for having a chronic discharge of blood.
Jesus healed thousands of people during His ministry on earth, but this particular story was included in the Gospels. Therefore, we need to ask what God wants us to learn from the story, since we know that all Scripture is “God-breathed,” and each passage has a specific purpose for our benefit (2 Tim 3:16-17, NIV).
Three things we can learn from the Mark 5 woman:
1) God honors perseverance and persistence.
The woman could have given up, as she had suffered for twelve years and spent all that she had on doctors, but she pushed through the crowd until she received her healing. The devil will tell you that too much time has gone by for your breakthrough to happen, but Jesus tells you to persevere and not to give up, for God is able (see the Parable of the Persistent Widow in Luke 18:1-8).
2) You must initiate your breakthrough.
It was the woman who initiated her breakthrough in the story, not Jesus. Her actions led Jesus to say, “your faith has healed you” (v. 34, NIV). Some examples of initiating your breakthrough include emptying out bottles in your house, getting rid of pornography, or writing a letter of forgiveness to someone whom you harbor offense toward and initiating reconciliation.
You can help people who need a touch from Jesus by giving your testimony of how He touched and changed you. The faith of the Mark 5 woman likely came from her hearing the testimonies of others.
3) You must put a demand on the anointing.
The woman had a “maybe this time” attitude that she would experience breakthrough when she pushed through all obstacles to get to Jesus. How much you press in at church will determine what happens at church, both for you and others (see Matt 20:30-34, Phil 1:19), for it is a place of spiritual provision (Exod 25:8). Let the pulpit pull you from a pit of unbelief, press in, and come to the altar.
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