A failed treatment can send the mind straight back to the hardest seasons. Today’s Daily Cup follows the woman with the issue of blood through twelve years of suffering to the moment she touched Jesus, and points every weary reader to the finished work of Calvary.
By Dianna Hobbs
A cup, the Word, and the finished work of Calvary. Photo: EEW Magazine Online
I had a moment of frustration this morning talking to my husband, Kenya. The treatment doctors gave me for this infection isn’t working. I’m not sure what they will come up with next. Moments like this can feel triggering too. They take my mind back to when I was seriously ill a decade ago, on death’s door. The repeated cycle of constant testing, prescribing, failing, and trying a new approach to no avail is in the back of my head.
Kenya encouraged me today to continue resting on the finished work of Christ and not allowing my mind to pull me back there. He is always so encouraging.
Being sick is one thing. Nearly dying more than once inside a medical system that frequently fails to produce answers and cures is another. I’m dealing with the aftermath of the latter, which makes almost everything with my health feel like a five-alarm emergency.
But then God gently spoke to my spirit about the woman with the issue of blood.
Mark tells us she “had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse” (Mark 5:26, KJV).
Twelve years of appointments. Twelve years of hope rising with each new remedy and collapsing when it failed. By the time she pressed through that crowd, she was carrying a bleeding body along with the memory of every disappointment.
The Greek word Mark uses for her condition is mastix. It means a whip or a scourge, the same word used for the lashes of a flogging in Acts 22:24. Her illness had been beating her for twelve years. Anyone who has lived through a long medical fight understands that language. The welts stay on the mind long after the body moves on.
Even after the beating her body, soul, and spirit took for over a decade, she clung to hope: “If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole” (Mark 5:28).
That hope is a picture of Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” She grabbed hold of hope before she ever grabbed hold of the hem of Jesus’ garment. It was her faith that propelled her forward.
The moment she touched Him, the fountain of blood that had been flowing for twelve long years dried up, and she “felt in her body that she was healed” (Mark 5:29).
The word translated felt is ginōskō, appearing in the verse as egnō. It means to know, to recognize, to perceive.
Mark adds that she knew it in her body.
A woman knows her body. She had lived with her suffering firsthand every day for twelve years. The assessments and the treatment plans came from someone else. The symptoms were hers, and she knew intimately what they felt like.
When things shifted, she knew. Her body became her witness. Nobody had to read her a result.
In much the same way, I know in my body that God healed me at a prayer service in 2017, almost a decade ago. Doctors may be stumped by this latest ailment, but I know it isn’t the sickness God already healed. Something else I know is that the same God who governed my medical crisis years ago still governs this lesser issue today.
After Jesus asked who touched Him (Mark 5:30), the woman came forward and “told him all the truth” (Mark 5:33). Though Mark doesn’t record her words, I imagine twelve years pouring out of her mouth in front of everyone. All she had been through. The frustrations. The dead ends. The cycles. The hopeless days.
Jesus listened to all of it. Then He spoke: “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague” (Mark 5:34).
Friend, take a bit of advice from a woman who has been through her fair share of trouble: hold on to your faith and refuse to let go. God still responds to faith. That doesn’t mean every issue will resolve the way we hope or that our desires override the will of God. Yet we know He is faithful to perform His Word.
Whatever you’re going through, place your trust in the finished work of Calvary. I know systems fail and people fall short, even the ones who promise to help. It can be frustrating. But Jesus never fails. What He has already done stands whether the next prescription succeeds or fails, and whether the trouble lifts tomorrow or lingers.
When Jesus was on the cross, He cried out three words that I am stirring into your cup today as the sweetener: “It is finished” (John 19:30).
In the Greek, those three words are one: tetelestai. It means completed, brought to its intended end.
As you drink down the contents of your cup, know this: the work Christ finished cannot be undone, reversed, or set back by new struggles. That work reaches backward into every hospital room I have ever been in and forward into every doctor’s office I will ever enter. The same is true for every crisis you have endured and every one still ahead.
It is finished.
And in Him, you are already made whole.
Keep believing.
Now, let’s pray.
God, I thank You for the finished work of Jesus Christ, which cannot be undone or reversed by any test, setback, or disappointment. I praise You for reminding me, right in the middle of distressing, inconvenient, and trying circumstances, that if I reach out for You in faith, surely You will hear, answer, and deliver. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
