ryan@clci.us

Scripture: Mark 5:21–43

There is a detail in the account of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood that I have been thinking about this week. It adds another dimension to what we discussed last week about finding purpose and preparation in the pause.

Jairus had come to Jesus with an urgent request. His twelve year old daughter was dying, and he desperately needed Jesus to come to his house. Jesus agreed, but the journey was anything but easy.

Mark tells us that a great crowd followed Jesus and pressed against Him. Imagine what that must have felt like for Jairus. Every moment mattered, yet the crowd made progress painfully slow.

Then Jesus stopped.

A woman who had suffered for twelve years approached Jesus from behind and touched His garment. She was immediately healed, but Jesus stopped to find out who had touched Him.

Mark 5:30 tells us that Jesus turned around in the crowd.

Think about that for a moment. Jesus had been walking toward Jairus’s house, but now He was physically turning in the opposite direction.

Imagine what Jairus might have felt. First, the crowd slowed their progress. Then Jesus stopped. And now, the One he desperately needed to move forward was looking in another direction.

Sometimes our experience with God feels much the same. We believe He is moving toward the answer to our prayers, but circumstances slow our progress. Things interrupt the journey, and sometimes it even appears that God is moving in the wrong direction.

But notice something remarkable.

While Jesus was attending to the woman, He never stopped listening to what concerned Jairus.

Mark 5:35 tells us that while Jesus was still speaking, people arrived from Jairus’s house with devastating news. His daughter had died.

Jesus immediately turned His attention to Jairus and said, “Do not be afraid; only believe.”

Jesus had turned toward the woman, but He had never forgotten Jairus.

And perhaps there was something greater happening in that pause.

While Jairus was waiting, he witnessed a woman receive healing after twelve years of suffering. Just moments later, when he was asked to keep believing despite the news of his daughter’s death, he had already witnessed the extraordinary power of Jesus.

Could it be that the interruption Jairus wished had never happened became the very testimony he needed to keep believing?

Sometimes what appears to be God turning away from our destination is actually God preparing us for what we will encounter when we arrive.

Jairus began the journey believing Jesus could heal the sick. He finished the journey knowing Jesus could raise the dead.

The circumstances grew worse, but his understanding of Jesus had the opportunity to grow greater.

Perhaps that is what we need to remember today.

God’s faithfulness cannot always be measured by the direction our circumstances appear to be moving. Jesus could turn toward the woman without turning His back on Jairus. He could attend to someone else’s suffering without abandoning Jairus’s need.

And when Jesus finally arrived at the house, He took the little girl by the hand and said, “Talitha koum,” meaning, “Little girl, arise.”

And she did.

The crowd had slowed Him. The woman had interrupted Him. The news had grown worse. But none of it diminished His power or changed His compassion.

The delay changed the circumstances, but it never changed the Savior.

Sometimes there is a greater purpose in the pause. And just because Jesus appears to be moving in another direction does not mean He has turned away from you.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, thank You that Your attention is never limited and Your compassion is never divided. Help us to trust You when progress is slow, when circumstances seem to move in the wrong direction, and when we cannot understand the pause. Open our eyes to what You are doing around us and strengthen our faith through the testimonies of others. Remind us that You never stop listening and that Your power is never diminished by the circumstances we face. Give us the courage to hear Your words, “Do not be afraid; only believe,” and the faith to keep walking with You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Mark 5:21-43

There is something remarkable about the encounter between Jairus, the woman with the issue of blood, and Jesus. Two people, two very different needs, and one Savior who becomes exactly what each person needs without allowing the needs of one to diminish His care for the other.

Jairus needed Jesus to come with him. The woman needed only to touch Him. Jairus needed Jesus to keep walking. The woman needed Jesus to stop. Jairus needed to believe. The woman needed to tell her story. One needed a miracle for someone he loved. The other needed a miracle for herself.

And Jesus had room for both.

But consider the pause.

Jairus had approached Jesus because his daughter was dying. Every moment mattered. Jesus agreed to go with him, but along the way, a woman reached through the crowd and touched His garment. She was immediately healed, yet Jesus stopped. He asked who had touched Him and allowed the woman to come forward and tell her story.

Imagine what that pause must have felt like to Jairus. While Jesus was attending to someone else’s suffering, his own situation was becoming more desperate. Then came the devastating news: “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?”

From Jairus’s perspective, the pause may have appeared to cost him everything.

But Jesus was never threatened by what happened during the delay.

Jairus was racing against death. Jesus was not. Jairus believed there was a window of opportunity that was rapidly closing. Jesus knew that even when the window closed, His power had not diminished.

What Jairus could not have understood was that the pause was also preparing him. Before being asked to believe Jesus could raise his daughter, he witnessed Jesus restore a woman who had suffered for twelve years. Someone else’s miracle became the testimony he would need for his own.

And perhaps there is an even deeper truth here. Jairus had come seeking help for his daughter, but Jesus stopped and called this unnamed woman “Daughter.” What Jairus might have considered an interruption, Jesus recognized as family.

The Kingdom of God does not operate according to our urgency, our hierarchy of importance, or our limited understanding of what is possible. Jesus does not have to neglect one person to care for another. His compassion is not divided, and His power is not diminished by being shared.

Sometimes we need Jesus to move. Sometimes we need Him to stop. Sometimes we are Jairus, desperate for God to keep walking toward our situation. Other times we are the woman, hoping He will notice us in the middle of everyone else’s needs.

And sometimes the pause we are frustrated by is the very place where God is revealing something about Himself that we will need for what comes next.

Jesus becomes exactly what each person needs without becoming divided between them.

The pause did not mean Jesus had forgotten Jairus. The delay did not mean the destination had changed. And death did not mean the promise of His presence had expired.

Jesus was still going to the house.

Perhaps that is what we need to remember today. Just because Jesus has stopped to do something we do not understand does not mean He has stopped moving toward what concerns us.

The pause is not always the absence of progress. Sometimes it is the preparation for a greater revelation of who He is.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, teach us to trust You not only when You are moving according to our expectations, but also when You pause. Help us recognize that Your compassion is never divided and Your power is never exhausted. Forgive us when we mistake delays for abandonment or someone else’s blessing for the loss of our own. Strengthen our faith to believe that You are still working, even when circumstances seem to grow worse. Remind us that You know exactly what each of us needs, and that nothing occurring along the way can diminish Your ability to accomplish Your purpose. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus.” John 12:10–11, NKJV

Lazarus had already been dead once.

Jesus called him out.

The community removed the grave clothes.

He was alive.

And now the religious leaders wanted to kill him again.

Not because Lazarus had done anything wrong. Not because he had preached against them. Not because he had organized a rebellion. He was dangerous simply because he was evidence.

Every time Lazarus sat at the table, walked through the village, or appeared in public, his existence testified that Jesus had done something no system could explain or control. That is the danger of a genuine move of God.

Sometimes established religion knows how to recognize what fits its expectations, but struggles with what God does outside of them. The chief priests could not deny that Lazarus was standing there. So instead of allowing the evidence to change them, they considered eliminating the evidence.

That is frightening.

It is possible to become so committed to protecting a system, a position, a tradition, or an understanding of God that we begin resisting the very work of God we once claimed to be waiting for.

Lazarus did not need an argument. He was the argument. He had been buried. He had been bound. He had been mourned.

And now he was alive.

Sometimes the strongest testimony is not what you say. It is that you survived what should have buried you. It is that you are walking after people watched you go into the tomb.

It is that the grave clothes are gone.

And there will always be people who are more comfortable with the version of you that was buried than the version Jesus called out.

The same people who could tolerate a dead Lazarus became threatened by a living one. Death did not challenge their system. Resurrection did. That is why we must be careful.

We can become so accustomed to the way God moved yesterday that we fail to recognize the way He is moving today. We can defend tradition while resisting transformation.

We can protect the structure while opposing the Spirit. We can become more concerned with preserving what we understand than celebrating what only God could have done.

The question is not simply whether we believe God can move. The question is whether we will recognize His movement when it disrupts what we expected.

Lazarus was living proof that God had moved. And religion had a decision to make. Celebrate the resurrection. Or try to bury it again.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, keep my heart tender enough to recognize Your work even when it does not happen the way I expected. Do not let me become so attached to my traditions, assumptions, or position that I resist what You are doing. Give me the humility to celebrate every place where You bring life out of death. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to Him, ‘Lord, come and see.’” John 11:34, NKJV

There are places in us we would rather keep sealed.

Old hurt.

Disappointment.

Grief.

Failure.

Questions we never resolved.

Things we buried because we did not know what else to do with them.

Jesus asked, “Where have you laid him?”

Not because He did not know. Perhaps because they needed to be willing to take Him there.

Their answer was simple:

“Lord, come and see.”

There is something powerful about allowing Jesus into the places we have closed off.

Come and see where it hurt. Come and see where I stopped hoping. Come and see what I buried. Come and see the part of my story I do not talk about anymore.

Jesus is not afraid of the tomb. He is not intimidated by the stone, the grief, or even the evidence of decay behind it.

And He does not ask us to clean everything up before we bring Him there.

He simply asks us to show Him where we laid it.

Sometimes healing begins when we stop asking Jesus to stay in the comfortable parts of our lives and finally say, “Lord, come and see.”

The place you sealed is not be the place Jesus wants to avoid.

It is the very place He wants to stand with you.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, give me the courage to take You to the places I have buried, sealed, and avoided. Come and see my hurt, my disappointment, my grief, and the places where I stopped hoping. Help me trust that You are not afraid of what is behind the stone. Meet me there, and do in me what only You can do. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“The LORD will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.” Exodus 14:14, NKJV

Israel had reached the end of what they could do. Pharaoh was behind them. The sea was in front of them.

There was no path they could create for themselves.

And Moses said, “Hold your peace.”

In the Hebrew, the idea is to become quiet, to stop striving, to stop trying to control what only God can handle. But there is another way to hear it too. Hold your peace.

Keep hold of it.

Do not let fear take it from you. Do not let pressure steal it. Do not let what is behind you or what is in front of you convince you that God has stopped working.

Then God does something they had never seen before.

The waters divide.

Water ebbs and flows, but God makes it move in a way that creates a road where no road existed.

He is not limited to the way things have always worked.

He can make a way in a direction you have never seen before.

Israel could not help themselves. They could not defeat Pharaoh. They could not cross the sea. They could not create the path.

So God did what they could not do.

Then He told them to move forward.

Sometimes faith is not forcing a way.

Sometimes faith is holding your peace long enough to see the way God is making.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, when I feel trapped between what is behind me and what is in front of me, help me hold my peace. Keep me from striving, panicking, and trying to control what only You can change. Remind me that You are not limited by what has happened before. Make a way where I cannot make one, and give me courage to move when You open it. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” John 5:17

For the man at Bethesda, nothing seemed to be moving in his favor. The water was not moving for him. The people were not moving for him. No one was carrying him.

And after thirty-eight years, he could not move himself.

Everything around him seemed still. But God was not still.

Jesus came walking toward the place where the man had been lying. That is one of the great truths of grace. We often say, “God helps those who help themselves,” but that is not the gospel. Sometimes we reach places where we cannot help ourselves. Sometimes our strength is gone. Our options are exhausted. Our plans have failed. Our ability has reached its limit.

And God still moves toward us.

The man did not get himself moving so that Jesus would notice him. Jesus moved toward the man, spoke into his helplessness, and then the man was able to move.

Grace came first.

“My Father is always working.” Even when the water is still. Even when people do not show up. Even when circumstances refuse to change. Even when you have nothing left to contribute.

God is still working.

You may not always see movement around you, but that does not mean there is no movement in heaven. Sometimes the greatest movement is not the thing you have been waiting on. Sometimes the greatest movement is God coming toward you and our willingness to believe and respond to His Word.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, help me trust You when nothing around me seems to be changing. Remind me that Your work is not limited by what I can see or by what I can do for myself. When my strength reaches its end, teach me to recognize Your grace. Help me respond when You speak and trust that You are still working, even in the stillness, in Jesus’ name, amen.

“Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” John 5:14 (KJV)

One of the most beautiful details in John 5 is that Jesus found the man again.

The first time, Jesus found him beside the pool, unable to walk.

The second time, Jesus found him after the miracle.

And this time Jesus says, “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more.”

Jesus was not only interested in whether the man could walk. He was interested in how the man would walk.

The miracle restored his body, but Jesus came back for his life.

Grace does not simply rescue us from what held us. Grace calls us to live differently because we are free.

Jesus does not only meet us in the crisis. He finds us after the crisis and reminds us that our freedom comes with a new way of living.

The first encounter got the man on his feet.

The second encounter gave him direction.

Jesus found him when he was broken.

Then He found him again when he was whole.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, thank You for finding me in my broken places. Keep finding me as I walk forward. Do not only change my circumstances. Change the way I live because of what You have done. Teach me to walk in the wholeness You have given me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” John 5:7

There is a time to understand why we are the way we are.

There is value in looking honestly at our wounds, our history, our disappointments, and the circumstances that shaped us.

Understanding can bring clarity. It can help us name what happened, recognize unhealthy patterns, and extend grace and forgiveness to places in ourselves and others we once misunderstood.

But explanation has limits.

Jesus asked the man at Bethesda if he wanted to be made whole. The man responded by explaining why he was still lying there.

No one helps me.

Someone always gets there before me.

I cannot reach the water in time.

His explanation may have been completely accurate. After thirty-eight years, he had plenty of evidence supporting it.

But Jesus did not argue with his explanation.

He simply said, “Rise.”

There comes a moment when understanding why we are here is no longer enough. Eventually, the question changes from “Why am I this way?” to “What am I going to do with what God is saying to me now?”

An explanation can help us understand our past without being allowed to govern our future.

We can become so committed to explaining why we cannot move that the explanation itself becomes another form of paralysis.

There is a difference between understanding your wounds and building your home inside them.

There is a difference between acknowledging what happened to you and allowing what happened to you to determine what happens next.

Maybe Jesus is not asking you for another explanation.

Maybe He is speaking to the part of you that has explained itself long enough.

Rise.

Take up what has carried you.

And walk.

Your explanation may tell the truth about how you got here, but it does not get the final word about where you go from here.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, give me wisdom to understand my past without becoming imprisoned by it. Show me where explanation has become excuse, where reflection has become avoidance, and where I have continued describing what You are calling me to leave. Help me receive the truth of what happened while also receiving Your word concerning what can happen next. When You say rise, give me the faith to stop explaining and start walking. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been in that condition a long time, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’” – John 5:6

For thirty-eight years, the man at Bethesda waited for the water to move. He believed his healing depended upon the right moment, the right circumstances, and someone willing to help him reach the pool.

Then Jesus came.

The man was watching the water, but the Word was standing beside him.

Sometimes we become so focused on how we believe God must move that we fail to recognize how God is already moving. We wait for circumstances to change, doors to open, people to help, or conditions to become perfect. But Jesus does not always improve the system we have been depending upon. Sometimes He bypasses it completely.

Jesus did not carry the man into the pool. He spoke directly to what had held him down:

“Rise, take up your bed, and walk.”

The mat that had carried him became the testimony he carried. What once represented his limitation became evidence of his liberation.

We should not allow yesterday’s condition to become today’s identity. You may have been in a situation for a long time, but your history does not have more authority than the voice of Christ.

The water may never move the way you expected, but when Jesus speaks, it is time to rise.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, open my eyes to recognize Your presence. Free me from depending upon methods, circumstances, and people more than I depend upon You. Speak to every place in me that has become discouraged, passive, or comfortable with limitation. Give me faith to rise, courage to carry what once carried me, and grace to walk in the new life You have called me into. In Jesus’ name, amen.

1 Corinthians 13:4-6

“Love is patient, love is kind.”

Paul does not begin with a list of rules. He begins with two declarations. Love is patient. Love is kind. Present tense. Active. Ongoing. These are not aspirations or ideals to aim for on a good day. They are statements about what love actually is, right now, in continuous motion.

The Greek word for patient is makrothumeo (mak-roh-thoo-MEH-oh). It means to hold fire long. Not to have no fire. Not to feel nothing. But to possess such governance over what burns inside you that the flame serves the relationship rather than scorches it.

The word for kind is chresteuomai (khres-TYOO-oh-my). Paul appears to have coined it. No one used this exact verb form before him. He took the root chrestos, meaning useful and fit to another’s actual need, and turned it into an action. To chresteuomai someone is to make yourself serviceable to what they genuinely require, not what is convenient for you to give, not what makes you feel generous, but what they actually need in this moment.

Together these two IS statements form the foundation. Patience holds the fire. Kindness directs it toward the other person’s real need. One governs the interior. The other governs the movement outward.

Then Paul shifts.

He begins carving in negative space.

Love does not envy. Love does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.

Each of these is not simply a bad habit to avoid. Each one is the shadow of something love already is. You only need to say love does not envy because love has already been established as patient and kind. Envy is what patience collapses into when it runs out. Envy is what kindness becomes when it turns inward and begins measuring what others have that you do not.

Boasting is the sound of kindness corrupted. The person who genuinely makes themselves useful to another’s actual need has nothing to announce. The announcement is the evidence that the service was never really about the other person at all.

Pride is patience that stopped holding fire and started hoarding it, converting long-suffering into a sense of superiority over those who did not endure as long.

This is what makes Paul’s architecture so precise. He does not list random virtues and random vices. He builds a structure. The IS statements are the load-bearing walls. The NOT statements are the cracks that appear when those walls begin to give way.

Love keeps no record of wrongs. This is perhaps the most searching of all the negatives. Because record-keeping is what patience does when it runs out of love. You can hold fire long for years, absorbing offense after offense, and if chresteuomai (kindness) has not governed the direction of that patience, you have not been practicing love. You have been building a case.

The difference between a patient person and a long-suffering record keeper is what lives at the center. If love is the center, patience accumulates grace. If self is the center, patience accumulates evidence.

What Paul is doing in this passage is describing love from two angles at once. The IS statements show you its face. The NOT statements show you what it refuses to become. And together they draw a portrait so specific and so demanding that no human being can read it without feeling the distance between what they offer and what love actually is.

That distance is not meant to discourage us. It is meant to drive us to the one in whom every IS statement is perfectly true and every NOT statement is perfectly kept, the one whose patience held through every rejection, whose kindness was always directed at your actual need, and who kept no record of wrongs when he had every right to fill volumes.

Heavenly Father, where our patience has been accumulating evidence instead of grace, forgive us and restore us. Where our kindness has been about our own generosity rather than another’s genuine need, correct the direction. Where we have been keeping records that the cross was meant to erase, give us the courage to close the book. Teach us the love that is not performed but possessed, not aspired to but alive in us through your Spirit. Make us patient and kind in the truest sense of both words, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Freedom Beyond A Flag

Galatians 5:1

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of men signed their names to a declaration that would cost most of them everything. They were not signing a guarantee. They were signing a risk. They believed that certain truths were self-evident, that liberty was worth dying for, and that a nation built on those truths could become something the world had never seen.

They were not entirely wrong. But they were not entirely right either.

Because every freedom that a government can grant, a government can also revoke. Every liberty written into law can be written out again. History has proven this in every century and on every continent. The flag is beautiful. The ideal is noble. But the freedom it represents is fragile in ways that July fourth celebrations rarely acknowledge.

Paul writes to the Galatians with a different kind of freedom in mind. He is not talking about political liberation or national independence. He is talking about something that no army could win and no legislature could grant. He is talking about freedom from the inside out, freedom from the power of sin, freedom from the weight of condemnation, freedom from the exhausting performance of trying to earn what has already been given.

Stand firm, he says. And do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

The yoke he describes is not a foreign oppressor. It is the internal bondage that religion without grace produces, the belief that you are only as acceptable as your last obedience, that love must be earned, that God is watching with a ledger instead of with the eyes of a Father.

Christ did not die to make you a better slave. He died to make you free.

On this weekend when fireworks will light the sky and anthems will fill the air, it is worth asking a quieter question. What are you still carrying that the cross already paid for? What yoke are you still wearing that was supposed to be removed at Calvary? What freedom have you declared with your theology but have not yet walked in with your life?

Two hundred and fifty years of American independence is worth honoring. But the freedom that Christ purchased is older than any nation, deeper than any constitution, and it will outlast every flag ever sewn.

Stand firm in it. It was bought at a price no founding father could afford.

Heavenly Father, on this weekend when we celebrate the freedom of a nation, remind us of the freedom that no nation can give and none can take away. Where we have remained in bondage you already broke, give us the courage to walk out. Where we have confused political liberty with spiritual freedom, correct our vision. Where the noise of celebration has drowned out the quiet voice of your Spirit calling us deeper, still the noise and let us hear you. We are grateful for the country we live in. We are more grateful for the kingdom we belong to. May we live today as people who know the difference, in Jesus’ name, amen.