“If I Can Only Touch His Garment!”

“And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her, he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.” Matthew 9:20-22 (ESV).

What a beloved account of faith in action is this story of the woman who just wanted to touch the fringe of His garment so she could be healed. What an example of faith, one that we all admire. If you recall, Jews were commanded in Deuteronomy 23:12 to wear “tzitzit” or tassels on the corners of their garments to remind them of the Law of Moses. Therefore, Jesus, along with all God-fearing Jews, would have had these “tzitzit” or fringes on his garments.

I find it interesting that this woman’s focus was on just touching these tassels, which was enough for her.  It reminds me of the centurion who told Jesus that he didn’t need to come to his house to heal his servant, but just to say the word, and he knew it would be done (Matt. 8:5-13). Their faith was not dependent on miracles; they simply believed that Jesus was a promise keeper, and if He said it, then it would be done.

Too many times, we get all wrapped around the axle over faith. We think that if we could just internally generate a little more faith, then everything would be fine. We put the demand on ourselves to “have more faith”, but faith is something that is generated by God Himself, not something that I can create. The word that we translate as “faith” in the original Greek means “to be persuaded” and in the Biblical context it means to be persuaded by God to trust Him to keep His word. God by His divine decree has given each one of us all the “faith” we need to be able to trust Him.

When we were still “dead in our trespasses and sin”, God gave us the faith to believe and trust that Jesus died for us, to bring us back to God. But “faith” doesn’t stop when we change our minds about how to be saved, from our doing good works to the truth that Jesus did all the good works for us. Faith continues throughout our Christian life here on earth. God is busy giving us the required faith (persuading us) to trust Him and live our lives in a way that brings honor and glory to our Savior. That’s what James was trying to say when he penned “…so also faith apart from works is dead.” (James 2:26). God does the persuading, and we trust Him to keep His word.

 God persuaded our lady in today’s story to get up from her home, to travel to see Jesus, and to touch the fringe of his garment. You see, if she had not gotten up and gone to Jesus, then her “faith” would have been of little use to her. In fact, simply calling it “Her faith” says it all. You see, it was God’s faith that He planted in her heart that prompted her into action to trust and go.

All too often, we try to rely on “our faith” and never trust it enough to act. Hebrews Chapter 11 lists 18 named Old Testament saints who demonstrated their confidence in God by trusting and obeying or doing what God asked of them. Each one of them allowed the faith that God had given them to persuade them to trust Him, to take Him at His word, and do what He had asked them to do.

You see, God-given faith always causes us to act, to allow our “faith” to direct us. To actually believe that God will keep His promises to us.  He says that “He will never leave us nor forsake us”, do we believe that is true? God says He will provide our needs, do we believe He will do that? Or do we spend our time “worrying” about how we will ever get through this situation in which we find ourselves?

 Maybe instead of trying to understand exactly “how” God will keep His promises, we need to focus on the fact that He “will” keep His promises, and like the lady that just wanted to touch the “tzitzit” or tassels of Jesus’ garments, she didn’t need to know precisely “how” Jesus was going to heal her, just that Jesus was a promise keeper. She used the faith that God gave her and put it into action, seeing God perform a miracle.

 Is there something in your life that God is persuading you to act on? Will you use this God given faith to do what God is asking of you? We all need to put our God-given faith into action and trust God to be the Promise Keeper that we know He is.

"Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"