The Power of Your Press

Are we talking? We say it because it sounds spiritual. Unfortunately, far too many of us have little confidence in the power of Jesus. But Dr. Tony Evans says it's more important than ever to move forward with our faith in Christ. Faith is not some ambiguous word.

Faith is acting like God is telling the truth. This is The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans. Author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative. Remember as a kid when you were in a crowd at the zoo or a parade and couldn't see past the people in front of you?

If you didn't have someone to lift you on their shoulders, the only way to get a good view was to press your way through the crowd to the front row. Well, our view of Christ can be blocked by our circumstances, and Dr. Evans says it's important to push past those situations in order to experience the Lord. Let's join him in Mark 5-25 as he tells the story of a woman who actively sought the Lord's power and received far more than she expected. If you've been living long enough, then you know life can get interrupted. Things show up that were not anticipated, not expected. They begin to change the trajectory of where you're headed. This is particularly true when life gets interrupted by pain, by something that comes on you that redefines you. When life comes on you and interrupts you, you sense a sense of loss. You sometimes lose your identity because you're now being controlled by the interruption. If that interruption is illness, you're controlled by the illness because it tells you whether you're good enough to get up strong enough to lay down or function during the day. If it's an interruption of hope that begins to define your emotions and a sense of discouragement sets in, when life becomes painful, it interrupts your plans. It can create emotional disturbances. It can create instability.

It can create the daunting weight of reality. In Mark 5, we have three stories back to back. This chapter has been called by some the chapter for incurables because we have three situations back to back of people whose lives have been interrupted by a situation they couldn't fix. The first one is the demoniac man.

He's under the control of demons and the demons just won't let him go. The third story is about a daughter, a little girl who's dying and there is no solution for her health. In between the demoniac man and the dying girl is a diseased woman. And this well-known story will give us a perspective on how to handle life's interruptions. Now, if your life hasn't been severely interrupted yet, keep living. An interruption, I can bet your bottom dollar is going to come in your life and circumstance.

So life has its interruptions and they are, when they're big enough, whoppers. So here is our lady. She's hemorrhaging. She's been hemorrhaging for 12 years. And so she's in physical discomfort on an ongoing basis.

So that's one problem. The second problem is she spent all the money she had on all the physicians she knew it says to fix her problem. But it says after spending her bottom dollar, not only were the professionals unable to resolve it, but she just kept getting worse. So she has a physical problem, crisis that leads to a financial crisis.

But not only does she have a physical crisis that led to a financial crisis, but a physical crisis that led to a financial crisis led to a social crisis. Because according to Leviticus chapter 15, when a woman hit her cycle, verse 19, verses 25 to 31 says that she had to remove herself. She had to remove herself for that period of her cycle or for as long as she was bleeding, because that period of time she would be viewed as unclean.

And as a result of that, social interaction was narrowed or limited during that period of time. Well, this lady has been bleeding out for 12 years. So that means her social contact with her kids, with her mate, with her friends was now non-existent. So she now has to deal with being alone. So she's physically sick, she's financially broke, and she's socially isolated. But not only is she physically sick, financially broke, and socially isolated, she is spiritually separated.

Because once you were viewed as being unclean, because of that period of time, and there's a whole theology behind that, that time will not allow us to get into now, that had spiritual implications, because the uncleanness created a separation. And can you imagine this lady's self-esteem? I mean, she's got to watch when she walks. She doesn't want to be embarrassing or embarrassed.

They didn't have all the sophistication that ladies have today. And so this issue of embarrassment would set in as well. I mean, her life is not a pleasant one right now. Now, when your life gets interrupted, it's not pretty. Whatever that interruption is, and they come as legion.

There could be many of them. There could be a firing, a pink slip that you didn't expect, and your career has been interrupted. There could be a relationship where somebody walks away and your stability has been interrupted.

There may be a child who does something wrong that puts you in legal jeopardy, and now you've got to spend all your money to try to keep them out of jail or to change their direction, and your life gets interrupted. And everything that you do does not work. That's her situation. In the midst of her unstoppable dilemma, it says that this woman, verse 27, heard about Jesus. After suffering for 4,380 days, 12 years, she heard that Jesus was in town. And she heard that when Jesus touched folk, changes happen.

That when Jesus touched people, things were different. So this message today is for anybody hemorrhaging. And you always know when you're hemorrhaging, because hemorrhaging involves the blood. And the Bible says the life of the flesh is in the blood. So when you sense your life is oozing away from you, your hope is oozing away from you, your dreams are oozing away from you, your health is oozing away from you, your future is oozing away from you, you're hemorrhaging.

You're bleeding out. And that was her issue. But in the midst of the hemorrhage, word got to her about Jesus. When she heard the word about Jesus, she said in verse 28, if I touch His garments, I will get well. What she heard about Jesus changed what she thought about her condition. When you're in a situation where the doctors don't have an answer, you need somebody to remind you about Jesus.

You need somebody to remind you of who He is and what He has done. So she begins this process of trying to get to Him to touch His garment. She presses through the crowd. And I'm going to mention the crowd now and talk about the crowd in a moment. But there were a whole lot of folks hanging out with Jesus, said there was a crowd. But evidently you can hang out with Him and not be touched by Him. You can evidently be part of the crowd, but not be transformed by the Christ. Because it says there was a crowd. She's on her hands and knees.

Because look, when you get desperate enough, when it's deep enough, when it's long enough, when it's painful enough, you ain't trying to be pretty and cute. You're trying to get where you need to go to get a supernatural answer to a situation you can't fix and you don't know anybody else who can. When Dr. Evans comes back in just a moment, he'll talk about the significant difference between wishful thinking and a firm belief. And if you'd like to move your faith forward from a mere hope that things might turn out all right into a solid confidence that they will, Dr. Evans has a powerful book that can help you reach that unshakable conviction. It's called God is Up to Something Great, and it reviews the lives of Paul, Peter, and Joseph to show how God can use all the failures of your past to build a very positive future. We'd like to send you this uplifting book as a way of saying thanks when you make a contribution to help support Tony's work here on the air and around the world.

And as an added bonus, we'll include the CDs or digital downloads of all ten full-length lessons in Dr. Evans' brand-new series, Bold Belief, along with God is Up to Something Great. Just visit us at TonyEvans.org to get the details on the special double offer and make the arrangements before this limited-time offer runs out. Again, that's TonyEvans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that contact information for you after part two of today's message and this. Are you hungry for more of God, more of His truth, more of His power, and more of His wisdom applied in your life? Then you need to connect with a community of passionate believers who are growing in God's Word through the Tony Evans Training Center with exclusive video and audio teaching from Dr. Tony Evans. This interactive online study experience allows you to explore theology, biblical history, and real-life application of the kingdom agenda anytime, anywhere. Visit TonyEvansTraining.org to get started today.

That's TonyEvansTraining.org. She begins her journey to Jesus. If I touch His garment, I will get well. I believe He can do what doctors can. I believe He can do what medical science has not done for 12 years.

I believe Jesus can fix it. That's what she says. But what's the deal about this garment? In some of the older translations, if you read the story, it will say, she touched the hem of His garment. The hem of the garment were tassels. The tassels were told to be put on the garment not to look cute and to have your swag.

They were put on the corner of the garment to remind you of something. God says these tassels are to remind you when you had no place to go in Egypt, when there was no exit strategy, when you had Pharaoh in his army holding you hostage, I stepped into your mess. I stepped into your impossible situation.

I stepped into your unresolvable problem. And I got you out of a bad situation because the tassels were your reminder, I am the Lord your God. I am your deliverer. Therefore, whenever you see those tassels swinging, you are to be reminded that I'm your ultimate deliverer, that you are to follow my commandments and not what you think. You are to follow my commandments and not your human opinion. He says you are to follow my commandments and not what everybody else is talking about. So what this lady is saying is, I'm getting to them tassels because those tassels tell me that He can deliver me. Those tassels tell me if I follow Him, He can transform my life in spite of, watch this, how long I've been dealing with this problem, 12 years.

If I get to Jesus, based on what I heard about Jesus, if I get to Him, He has the last word, not my circumstance. And so she begins clawing away to Jesus, clawing away to Him. It says in verse 29, immediately the flow of her blood was dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. To put it another way, she was feeling some kind of way.

She said, I'm feeling something different right now. When I grabbed the tassel and affirmed my faith in His ability to deliver, when I grabbed that tassel, I felt something happening inside my bones that I haven't felt for 12 years. Immediately, verse 30, Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power preceded from Him, had gone forth, turned around to the crowd and said, who touched my garments? She touched the tassel and Jesus perceived, power left it. Now, I don't know how many folk were in the crowd, but the power only left for one person. So just because you're in the vicinity don't mean you get the power. Just because you're sitting in church don't mean you get the power. Just because you're hanging out around Jesus doesn't mean you get the power. You ever had a booster because your battery went dead? That's called a transfer of power.

They take the cables, connect your positive with their positive, your negative with their negative, and they transfer power from something that has life to something that is dying or dead. You can't go to the doctor and get this power. You can't go to the professionals financial and get this power.

You can't go to the social scientists and get this power. She heard that Jesus had it to offer. And Jesus felt the power oozing from Him. He raised the question, who touched me?

Who touched me? Looked around, sees the woman, and the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came, fell down before Him, and told Him the whole truth. And then Jesus speaks to her in this final verse. He says to her in verse 34, daughter. Because I'm not just interested in a healing, I'm interested in a relationship. See, a daughter, that's family.

That's family. See, a lot of folks want to touch the tassel who don't necessarily want a relationship. Unfortunately, far too many of us have little confidence in the power of Jesus, or we talk it. We say it because it sounds spiritual.

But we don't go after Him like that. He says, your willingness to place confidence in my ability to change your situation, even though it's been over an extended period of time, has made you well. Yeah, I made you well, but you cooperated with my program. You were real low because you were touching the tassels at the hem of my garment, and everybody else was bumping up against me.

So you just part of the crowd. But my power left me and healed you on the spot. I'm not going to let you stay down there and hide and go back with your private miracle.

No, no, no. But let the redeemed of the Lord say so. You stand up and you tell everybody what just happened to you. Because I don't want to heal you in private, but you're not willing to testify in public. I'm not willing to grant you a miracle that changes your life and you're not willing to tell nobody. So I'm going to call you out because I want you to tell me and I want you to tell the whole crowd your story. So when you are hemorrhaging and life is ebbing from you, and you claw your way to Jesus, you grab the tassels of his power and he breaks through for you.

Don't you keep that to yourself. You let the redeemed of the Lord say so. You get up and shout it from the rooftops. This is what God did for me. The doctors couldn't do it. The bank couldn't do it. My friends couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it. But I climbed to Jesus when I ran out of options and heaven came down and glory filled my soul. The thing I like about this story is that Jesus does this miracle on his way to raise a girl from the dead, but he pauses along the way to help a woman in a crisis.

You remember the song? The song says, pass me not, O gentle savior. Hear my humble cry. While on others thou art calling, don't skip sister girl.

Do not pass me by. If God on his way to healing you, stops and does something for me, you better get up out of your chair and let it be known at work, in the neighborhood, at church. This is what God did for me.

So don't keep it in. Grab the hem of his garment. And if it's part of his conditional will, do like they do at a football game. When the player scores the touchdown, they ain't sitting down being quiet. They're giving it up.

They're giving it up. They're letting you see and hear what the power of Jesus can do. Dr. Tony Evans, talking today about the importance of reaching out and taking hold of Christ.

The Bible tells us that Jesus died to cleanse us of our sins, allowing us to boldly approach God and, in turn, to live a life as a confident demonstration of God's goodness. Dr. Evans calls this Bold Belief, and that's the title of this brand new audio compilation that includes the full-length version of today's message, including portions we didn't have time to present on the air. As I mentioned earlier, you can get the entire 10-lesson Bold Belief series on CD or digital download. Along with a copy of Tony's popular and encouraging book, God is Up to Something Great. This special double offer is our gift to you, in appreciation for your donation to help support the ministry of the alternative. You can get all the details and make the arrangements online at tonyevans.org. Again, that's tonyevans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222 and let one of our team members help you.

Again, that's 1-800-800-3222. Many things are contagious, and not all of them are bad. Dr. Evans knows good things can go viral, so he encourages you to look for ways to start a viral spread of kindness with each new day. Well, coming up tomorrow, it's important to know what God has to say to all people, but it's equally important to know what God has to say specifically to you. Be sure to join Dr. Evans next time as he presents biblical insight on hearing God's voice. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by The Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.