Matthew 9:18-26
The main purpose of the Christian Church is to spread the Good News of life by faith in Jesus Christ. We can be born into a new life. Life is filled with distractions and busy work. Look at your clock of life and see what has, and is, consuming most of the time in your life. This is true whatever age you are. This can be true for all people, even for older adults whose clocks of life are running on high speed toward the end of our days. The distractions and busy work take our eyes and minds off the main things that should be the most important things that shape our lives.
The most important thing should be our faith in Jesus Christ. You see, in God’s plan through Jesus he always responds to us through our faith in Him. In the scripture we read the response that Jesus made to the acts of faith of two people. The first person that came in faith to Jesus was the leader of a synagogue. He came and knelt before Jesus and said, “My daughter has just died, but you can bring her back to life again if you just come and lay your hand on her.”
In this same scripture lesson Jesus responds to a second person’s act of faith. As Jesus and His disciples went with the leader of the synagogue to his home, a woman reached out to touch the fringe of His robe because she had faith that she would be healed from her sickness. She had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. When she touched his robe, Jesus turned around and when he saw her, he said, “Daughter, be encouraged! Your faith has made you well.” Her faith in Jesus did heal her from her sickness.
When Jesus arrived at the official’s home, he saw the noisy crowd and heard the funeral music. “Get out!”, he told them. “The girl isn’t dead; she is only asleep.” But the crowd laughed at him. After the crowd was put outside, however, Jesus went in and took the girl by the hand, and she stood up! The report of this miracle swept through the entire countryside. When Jesus touches us, we have a new life.
God has not changed. He is able to respond to us in our troubled lives broken by our sin. Faith in Jesus can heal and give new life to any of us if we believe in this Holy Living God of life. He can bring new life to a community of faith if we turn and believe in God’s power to renew and restore the life of a dying church.
The power that renews and restores begins when, with a repentant heart, we ask Jesus to save us from our sin and give to us the power of a new life. Faith in Jesus must become the main thing for us as individuals or as the church body, if we desire a new life restored by faith in God’s plan that is in the Bible. His plan works in all who come to him with repentant hearts and ask God to save and heal us from our sin. His plan works for us through His love for the repentant sinner. He provides the source for us to have a growing faith. The sources that Jesus has provided for us to keep a growing faith are His word and promises found in the Bible. If you want a growing informed faith, read the Bible. If you want a growing faith, worship with fellow Christians in His church where the message of faith is proclaimed from the Bible. If you want a growing faith, take time to be in the presence of a Holy God and seek his answers to your needs and the sins and evil you are facing. This is what we can do in our prayers. As an individual, or the body of Christ, we need to pray for His grace to empower our faith. In prayer He restores and renews us and His Church. The Holy Spirit is the source that is always with us. We are never alone in the struggles of life. The Scriptures tell us over and over “Fear not, I am with you”. God’s Spirit powers the faith we have in Jesus Christ. These are the sources that keep our faith on God as the main thing in life. When God is the main thing in life, we are not distracted by the world filled with sin and evil. When our faith in God is the main thing in life, we will have real joy and love in our lives as we live each day. Without faith in God’s plan we grow old. We live in a hopeless world where we see only pain, evil, suffering and death. Without faith in Christ we are a beaten people and that is the truth for a collective church. When churches die it is because they no longer have faith in God’s plan of salvation through His cross and resurrection. We have many people that laugh at God’s plan. But when each of us stands before His judgment the laughing will stop unless you believe His plan.
Ask any beaten athlete from the blind Sampson to the great boxer Joe Louis; ask a convict, ask an alcoholic, or drug addict about the old way of life that defeated their plan for their lives. We are all beaten people unless we have a living faith in God. Joe Louis was a great boxer and was heavyweight champion for more years than any other heavyweight champion. But one night in 1951 Joe found out that age, time and a younger boxer, Rocky Marciano, would defeat him. If God is not the main thing in your faith life, you will find time, age, sin and evil will defeat and destroy the life that only faith in God gives us. Will you accept God’s plan of life as the main thing each day as you live the life he has given you? Real life is a walk of faith each day with Jesus Christ.
