Do You Ever Wonder if Jesus is Worth It?

Posted on Sep 12, 2017 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Stacey Thacker

We don’t even know her name. She might have been 25 or 40, married or single. She could have been a sister or a mother. Maybe she was a lot like you and me. What we do know is her life was one of pain and suffering of the cruelest kind. She was a broken-down woman desperate for change.

I think this woman living by the shores of Capernaum must have been following Jesus from a safe distance for quite some time—listening, seeking, and hoping he could help her. Up until now, no one else had been able to. Would he? Could he?

Scripture gives us the tiniest glimpse of the moment before the moment she reached out. I suspect she was having a full-blown conversation inside her own heart. Did she count the cost? Did she have doubts? She must have, “for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his garment, I will be made well’ ” (Matthew 9:21).

This unnamed, faceless woman was having a crisis of faith, but she must have believed the risk was worth it, for she extended her hand to brush the tasseled hem of his robe. Jesus was worth it. He had fueled her faith precisely at the moment she felt like quitting. And so with faith as small as a mustard seed, she reached for him.

This was all it took, and what happened next is one of my favorite encounters in the Bible. “Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’ And instantly the woman was made well” (Matthew 9:22).

Jesus saw her and uttered the words she dreamed of hearing. “Made well” he said. He spoke courage to a girl who had known nothing but a daily reminder that she was broken. Did you notice he called her not woman, but daughter? We can hear so much tenderness in this one sentence. Women in her condition were not called daughter. They were called unclean. But Jesus erased that label with a word. Her faith, an act of worship, made her well in an instant. The millions of moments she had collected before this one no longer mattered. She was no longer woman unclean. She was daughter made well.

I don’t know about you, but I want the kind of faith that passes through the crisis point and reaches out anyway. I want to hear him say to me, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”

Are you asking yourself if Jesus is worth it? Do you feel like quitting? Are your heart and head in complete disagreement over whether you should reach out to brush the hem of Jesus’s garment? We don’t have much to bring to the table besides our messy lives and minuscule faith. Our inner conversations don’t scare Jesus away either, because they don’t change who he is. He stands ready to fuel our faith in the most amazing way, if only we will take a look and extend our hand.