Instagram Jesus Week 7: Devotional Day 1
DAY 1
Daily devotional
Read
Mark 1:29-31
Ask
Do I need faith to be healed? What if my faith is weak or non-existent? What if I fluctuate between faith and doubt? Can I still be healed? Is it God’s will to heal me?
Reflect
I lead a LifeGroup of leigh-11-year-old girls. This year I decided to ask them what questions they have for God. I wanted to hear from them what subjects they wanted to cover over the next nine months. The questions were, and are, amazing! We are still trucking through them. One was this: How do you deal with disabilities in people even if you pray?
When someone is sick or handicapped or disabled, it’s hard to see God in it, isn’t it? In our LifeGroup, we started exploring this issue by looking in Genesis at God’s good creation and considering the impact of the fall. As we considered the overarching story of Scripture, we spent time dwelling on the character of God—a God that wants the very best for us and will use everything in this broken world to his glory.
Ultimately, we have to decide if we believe he is not only able, but also willing to heal. Faith has an important place in both healing itself (see James 5:15, Matt. 9:2, Mark 11:22-24, Acts 14:8-10) and trusting in the one who heals. We can remember that, whatever the outcome of our prayers for healing, Jesus bore all of our sickness, shame, illnesses, and sin on the cross. Sickness and disease was never his plan, but he still came up with the one and only solution: Jesus. As we wrestle with the question of whether God is willing to heal, it helps me to consider the character of God. When he heals, it is because he is gracious, compassionate, and willing to minister to the children he loves. If he doesn’t heal, he is still all of these things.
There aren’t easy answers to the problem of suffering. As you read and reflect on today’s passage, let me encourage you to bring your honest questions, your doubts, your suffering, and the suffering of others to the one who is always good and always present in our suffering. Consider prayerfully what your biggest challenge is: to have faith God can and does heal, or to have faith in the God who is able to heal even when he does not?
In this passage of Scripture Mark 1:29-31, we see a loving Father that listened to the faith-filled plea of his friends and privately healed someone in a humble setting. No crowds were necessary to prove who he was; just a woman that was sick…and a Savior that took her hand. Beautiful.