The Power of Positive Expectation

Recently, I've been re-reading the account in Luke's gospel, chapter eight, verses 43 to 48, of a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. She had spent all her money on doctors, but none of them had been able to help her.

On a certain day, Jesus was passing through the city where she lived, accompanied by a great crowd of people. This was His second visit to this city. On the occasion of His first visit, He had performed a miracle on a man whose situation seemed so hopeless, that many of the pople who witnessed it were so afraid, they asked Jesus to leave their city.

Now He was back and this lady apparently was convinced He was her only hope of being healed. She forced her way through the crowd, some of whom were actually bumping into Jesus, as He passed along. She was convinced that if she could just touch Him, she would be healed.....that was her expectation. When she was close enough, she reached out her hand touched the border of His garment. The moment she did so, she felt the flow of blood from her body, cease.

Jesus stopped walking. He asked, "Who touched Me?"

The apostle Peter answered Him by pointing out that with the multitude of people thronging around Him, some of them pressing against Him, it was impossible to identify any one person who had touched Him.

This did not satisfy Jesus. He responded by saying, "Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me."

When the woman who had been healed, heard Him say these words, she fell down, tremblilng, before Him and confessed, in front of all the people gathered around, why she had touched Him and how she had been immediately healed.

Jesus's final words to her were, "Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace".

He identified the expectation she had of being healed, expressed as it was, by her reaching out and touching him, as her faith.

If you are dealilng with a serious situation right now, you can do what this woman did, by believing the words Jesus spoke to her... that it was her faith had made her well, then exercising your own faith by reaching out to Him yourself.

His words are as powerful today, as they were 2,000 years ago. Jesus told His disciples "Heaven and earth will pass sway, but My words will by no means pass away".

In my first book, "Ultimate journey", you will find a number of accounts of people I have been involved with, some of them, patients at our pathology practice, who have acted on Jesus' words and experienced incredible miracles in their lives.

You could read through some of the chapters such as, "The Little by Little Principle", "Therapeutic Touch" or "My Communion Story", in order to build up your own expectation.....your own faith, so that the power Jesus released into the lives of these people, and the woman whose experience we just shared, can be released by Him into your life, as you reach out to Him yourself...