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When the medication isn’t working, when your friends are tired of trying to help you, your family is moving on with life, and your psychiatrist has retired because your bills were enough to supplement his income forever, what’s next?
Why do the bad days keep coming? Why can’t you seem to get off the hamster wheel and break the cycle? Let’s ask these hard questions today and see if we can’t find some honest answers, shall we?
I didn’t even know that I was trapped in a cycle until I was an adult, still battling the same struggles I faced as a child. At the back of my mind there had always been a little voice telling me that something wasn’t right. I truly believed that there was something wrong with me, I was incurably ill or damaged in some way.
I don’t remember when, where, why, or how, but I remember a season of my life when I heard repeatedly from many different sources in many different ways “you are not broken”, “God is making straight what is crooked in your life”, “there is nothing wrong with you”, “He has made you righteous in His sight”, and other messages that challenged the identity I had adopted for so long.
Over time it became clear to me that the Lord was trying to get a message to me. I knew that if I wanted to be able to heal and walk away from the fear and “issues” I would have to find a way to believe what God had to say about me over what my mind was telling me about myself.
Maybe you are where I was, feeling trapped, hopeless, helpless, and broken beyond repair. Let me encourage you, it’s not the end. I want to share a story with you that sums up how I was able to break the cycle of depression and anxiety by finding my true identity in Christ.
Mark 5:25-34 “And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, And who had endured much suffering under [the hands of] many physicians and had spent all that she had, and was no better but instead grew worse. She had heard the reports concerning Jesus, and she came up behind Him in the throng and touched His garment, For she kept saying, If I only touch His garments, I shall be restored to health. And immediately her flow of blood was dried up at the source, and [suddenly] she felt in her body that she was healed of her [distressing] ailment, And Jesus, recognizing in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around immediately in the crowd and said, Who touched my clothes? And the disciples kept saying to Him, You see the crowd pressing hard around You from all sides, and You ask, Who touched Me? Still He kept looking around to see her who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had been done for her, though alarmed and frightened and trembling, fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, Daughter, your faith (your trust and confidence in Me, springing from faith in God) has restored you to health, Go in (into) peace and be continually healed and freed from your [distressing bodily] disease.”
In the time that this story would have taken place the culture was much different than ours today. When a woman got her period she was considered unclean. Not only did she carry the title of “Unclean”, but she was not allowed to enter the temples or public places. She was, for the most part, confined to her own four walls until the “flow” (what a gross word) ceased and she could undergo a cleansing ritual.
If she did dare to leave her home she was required to scream out “UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN!” (really?) wherever she went in order to give others the chance to scurry away and avoid brushing up against her in the crowd.
The woman in Mark 5 had been “Unclean” for twelve years. No one besides her doctors had been in contact with her, and even they had given up and moved on as soon as she had poured out the last of her worldly wealth to pay them. In this highly religious culture she had been completely abandoned.
Sometimes rock bottom is only one step before the one that changes everything. Just saying. Your most degrading, dehumanizing, isolating experiences can be the ones that propel you to healing the fastest, all depending on how you approach them.
We read that she heard the reports of Jesus, and hope began to stir. I believe it was Jesus’ compassion that stirred her faith. I’m sure she heard how Jesus took his time to talk to the ones no one else would talk to, and reach out to those no one would touch. He even changed his plans to go seek out those who needed him the most, whom others had given up on. The ones just like her. Hope was rising.
In verse 28 it says, “For she kept saying, If I only touch His garments, I shall be restored to health.”
There’s confidence in that statement. In fact, there’s so much confidence that between what she had heard and what she had been speaking she had mustered up enough courage and strength to seek out and touch Jesus by the hem of his garment.
The only way she could have found that level of inner strength was to be completely convinced that everywhere Jesus went it was His will and His good pleasure to heal every sick person he encountered. If she had had a single doubt about that truth she would not have been able to follow through.
You and I must recognize first and foremost that it is God’s will for us to walk in total health. If we don’t even believe that much we cannot expect to receive an ounce of healing. We see in James 1:5-8 how it works,
If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.
I think it’s safe to say that the woman with the issue of blood no longer placed her faith in doctors, or medication, or human strength, but in Jesus Christ alone.
Let’s jump back to the part that says, “she kept saying”. This is key! She didn’t just think about the possibility of her healing, she spoke it. Then she spoke it again. And again. And again.
She didn’t say it a few times and suddenly felt better, it says “she kept saying”. There is no expiration on that statement. There is also no room for doubt in that statement. I think it’s important to realize that we don’t actually know how long she sat in her room just listening to the stories of Jesus from the few who would come to visit her.
We don’t know how long she “kept saying” before she finally got up and went out. What we do know is that she didn’t receive a physical change in her body until she touched Jesus’ robe. You may have been praying for years and yet every morning you are once again greeted with the symptoms of illness. That doesn’t mean anything!
This woman kept listening, meditating, and speaking her healing even when she saw nothing change.
She wasn’t asking friends if they thought she could be healed. She wasn’t consulting her physical body or her emotions to check if she was getting better. She didn’t go on facebook to rant about how difficult her life was and check back every few minutes to see who commented. She simply “kept saying” what she had become totally convinced of while listening to the stories.
Your voice, believe it or not carries the greatest influence on your ears. What you say will either fully convince your ears that you believe something, or confuse your ears about something they thought you believed. We are told in Proverbs 18:21
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they who indulge in it shall eat the fruit of it [for death or life].
Listen to the words coming out of your mouth, do you believe what your mouth is saying? Should you? Are you crying out “Unclean, unclean!”, or are you telling yourself “I shall be healed”?
Your ears are listening to your mouth to find out what your mind believes. What you believe will leak into your emotions, actions, words and even into your physical health. That is what is meant by “they who indulge in it will eat the fruit of it [for death or life].“
So we have seen the two key ingredients to the healing stew, hearing and speaking. Now I want to look back on this woman’s story for a few more pieces of insight into that journey.
Imagine planning your encounter with Jesus as this woman did. She knew she would receive her healing if she only touched his garment. But she would have to leave her home. She had to get out of bed, which would already be pushing the boundaries of her failing strength.
Then she had to dress herself, and tie up her sandals without passing out from the dizziness brought on by blood-loss. Then, without being noticed by her neighbors, she would have to slip out her front door and, breaking religious law, she would try to remain silent enough to slip through the crowd unnoticed until she reached Jesus.
There is only one way she could have found the strength to push her physical body to accomplish this task, and to push her mind beyond the fear of discovery, or worse, the doubt that was trying to keep her from receiving her healing. What is it you wonder?
She had to change her identity. After 12 years of being called Unclean, it would be really hard to reject that name and refuse to identify with it any longer. Yet she found a way. She could not have received her healing if she hadn’t.
At some point in time, while laying in her bed, meditating on the stories of Jesus, speaking out that she would be just like those others whom he healed if she could only touch his robe, she had stopped thinking of herself as “the woman with the issue of blood”.
She birthed a vision of herself whole and healthy. It was that vision, that excitement at the manifestation of her healing that gave her the strength to get up, go out, and touch Jesus.
The moment she touched His garment and received her healing she knew she was made clean. She would still have to undergo the cleansing ritual and show herself to the doctors and priests to prove her healing, but none of that would cause her doubt whether or not she was fully recovered. She KNEW healing was hers, because she identified as one who had touched the source of healing itself.
Later Jesus said that it was her faith that healed her. What is faith? Hebrews 11:1 tells us, Now faith is the reality[a] of what is hoped for, the proof[b] of what is not seen.
Faith is unwavering belief. It’s what she KNEW, by hearing and declaring.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. – Romans 10:17
So what are you hearing? What is it that you keep saying? It will determine what you believe. What you believe will determine what you receive.
P.S. If some or a lot of what you’ve read is new to you, or you’re not sure what to make of it, head over to my Books & Resources for some of the teaching resources that have taught me on my journey to live by faith.
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