Your Imagination is your Faith

She heard the story of faith and believed it. She heard that there was a prophet from Galilee; a man named Jesus of Nazareth.

He was traveling throughout Judea healing the sick and preaching a new gospel. She had an issue. She had a problem she didn’t want anybody to know about. She had to hide the fact that she was ceremonially unclean and not allowed into the synagogue for worship. She needed a miracle but was afraid to ask. Nobody could ever know about her health problems. So, she devised a scheme in her imagination. In her mind she imagined a plan to get a healing from Jesus without him ever knowing about it. She imagined that if she could just touch him that miracle power would come out of him and heal her of this terrible bleeding. She made plans to attend his next public meeting where he would be preaching. She slowly worked her way to the center of the crowd. She saw him for the first time—Jesus the healer standing with his disciples. Then at the right moment she pretended to fall and touched the hem of his garment. In that moment she was healed. She felt it; she knew it. And Jesus knew it too. He felt the power go out of him. “Who touched me?ˮ he asked.

There was a huge crowd surrounding him. But something spiritual had just taken place. She was healed! Healing power went from Jesus to this woman. Her imagination that if she could just touch him, her act of faith to reach out and touch him, created a miracle. She believed that Jesus had the power to heal her and she imagined that if she could just touch him she would be healed. Whose idea was it to touch Jesus? Who told her to touch Jesus? Her imagination was her faith. Desperate people do desperate things. She was a desperate woman. Do you have an issue today? Do you need a miracle? Press into the crowd and reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ garment in faith. What was she thinking? What was she imagining? I want you to think about this story in the Bible from the imagination of a woman who received a healing from Jesus. The healing was an act of a woman’s faith—created first in her imagination before she acted it out. Her imagination was her faith!

“As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. “Who touched me?” Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out of me.” Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” Luke 8:42-48 ~George DeTellis, Jr.