By Mark Grace, CCCNZ Ambassador
Na ko tetahi wahine e mate ana i te pakaruhanga toto, ka tekau ma rua nga tau.
Sa i ai le fafine na maua i le ma‘i puna toto i tausaga e sefulu ma le lua.
And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years.
Mark 5:25You might be wondering where a devotion might head based on these verses. Today, instead of a devotion, I’d like to try to show you how a seemingly odd verse or passage like this one can change a life.
Ada Lum is well retired now from a lifetime of service with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. I never met Ada, but she is a bit of a hero of mine. She helped students introduce friends to Jesus by reading the Bible with them.
Ada had five simple and insightful questions she would ask when exploring the encounters Jesus had with people from the Bible. I’d like to ask these of Jesus’ encounter with the woman with bleeding in Mark 5:25-34.
What’s the situation? What was Jesus doing? Who was he with and why? What does it mean to have bleeding? How would this woman have been treated?
Who are the people, and what are their needs? What was this woman’s need? How desperate was she? What kind of risk did she take? How does she come to Jesus?
What’s Jesus’ solution? What does Jesus do? How does Jesus challenge the cultural, social, and political norms of his day? How did he offer the ultimate solution for this person’s problem?
What are the responses? What’s the reaction from the crowd? How would this woman have responded?
How does this apply? What do you have in common with the characters in the story? What would be a current example of this kind of situation? Do you think we still face these issues today? What’s an example of this in your own life? In what ways does this challenge you personally?
I found these questions to be incredibly helpful in showing Jesus to students. Asking these kinds of questions can shine light on our human condition and help them see their need for Christ. It reveals the power of Jesus Christ to save and heal not only the people in the story but them, too.
I can’t tell you the amount of times that Jesus has become more precious to me and to a student as we saw him more deeply through this story and others like it.
Because the Bible is the place where we see Jesus most clearly, one way God invites us to evangelise is by exploring what the Bible says about Jesus with those we are seeking to reach. Can I encourage you to give it a go?
