Day 9 | 40-Day Lenten Fast & Devotional

While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” Mark 5:35-36

Good morning, good morning, grace and peace be unto all of you, my Father's children. This is the day that the Lord has made and we shall rejoice and be glad in it. As we've been trailing this week in a series based on trusting and having faith in God for day nine, I want us to take a look at the gospel according to Mark, Mark chapter five. Mark chapter five is full of Jesus just being Jesus. So I encourage you in your free time to read the entirety of that chapter. But I wanna focus in on verse number 35 and 36. It says, "while Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jarius, the synagogue leader. Your daughter is dead, they said. Why bother the teacher anymore? Over hearing what they said, Jesus told them, don't be afraid, just believe."

I love this scripture. This entire pericope is filled with an opportunity for you to really see how God moves and operates, even in situations that seem like they're already done. The story goes as this: There's a synagogue leader, a man of importance who finds his way to Jesus to ask for help for his sick daughter. His daughter has been ill and he's asking for Christ to come by his house and heal his daughter. Here's the problem, on his way to the manifestation of his miracle, his miracle was then interrupted by a woman who has an issue of blood who stops Jesus on the way to grasp a hold of her own healing. After receiving her breakthrough, someone comes from Jarius' house and says, listen, don't even bother the mass anymore, your daughter's dead. Christ overhearing what he says says, hey, hold on, wait a minute. Don't be afraid, just believe.

I love this because in an age of so much disinformation, it's so important for us to be tapped into the source of truth in our lives. Christ always represents that beacon that draws us back to center. Here's the thing, most of the time Christ has to operate in that space in places where our surrounding circumstances contradict what God is saying. The reality of what we're going through oftentimes can outweigh God's supernatural word to you on today. Trusting in God forces you to be in a place to dismiss the erroneous testimony of those who don't trust in him or those who have not heard what you heard. Christ gave him a word and inside of that word he says, listen, do not be dismayed. Don't be discouraged by what you're hearing. So we have to be very careful about the areas and the entities we allow to speak into our lives and into our situation. We got to be prejudiced to the places that we to have impact by way of word into what's going on in our day-to-day experience. We have to be mindful of what we allow to penetrate our psyche, our spirit, our attitude on a day-to-day basis. So I want to encourage you on today, that as we pour the word into our spirit on this morning, as we pour ourselves into this book, allow this to be our beacon so that when we see things that are contradictory to God's word and promise in our lives, we're not discouraged, we're not despondent because we have a faith which supersedes anything that anybody can say.

So my question to you is, what are you feeding your spirit? What are you allowing to speak truth into your life? Power of life and death is in the tongue. That's why every now and again, I just gotta shut the news off. Every now and again, I gotta just turn the phone off. Every now and again, I just need some alone time with the Lord so that he can speak directly to my situation, my circumstance, and my experience.

Be blessed on today. Listen, we have an action packed weekend, if you will. We have our women's breakfast tomorrow at 930, tomorrow. We have prayer call early in the morning at eight o'clock sweet hour prayer. So join us on our prayer call on Saturday morning. Join us on women's breakfast at nine thirty and I'll see you on Sunday morning. God willing and he delay his coming. If not, we're coming back next week but on today be encouraged. Have faith in him. He's got this. Have an incredible week that weekend.