Steven Furtick - I'm Not What I Thought
I want to share a Scripture today. I'll tell you what. There's a great energy in this room. I wish you were here. I know Holly thought I was crazy, because last night, getting ready to preach, I started playing all of the old Elevation Worship videos. I know she must have thought, "This is kind of weird. You're in there listening to songs you wrote". But I needed to see everything like it was. I started crying. I'm not a crier, but I don't know. I thought I wasn't a crier, but I guess I'm not what I thought I was. Let's just call the sermon that. Can we call this sermon I'm Not What I Thought?
Join me in the Bible, and also share this message with someone who needs to hear it. I'm going to be sharing from Mark, chapter 5. If you share this message, the Lord will bless you with something better than a stimulus check this week. You will have treasure in heaven. Everybody who shares this message will receive a blessing. Let's make it super vague like that. I'm Not What I Thought.
Now remember, you can misinterpret my messages. Do not look at your husband and say, "You're not what I thought," because that's not the idea here. I'm Not What I Thought. Thank you, Jesus. Mark 5:21 says, "When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake…" I was just thinking about Brandon Lake when I read that. "…a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus…" Important dude. "…came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him. 'My little daughter is dying.'" I can't imagine that. "'My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.' So Jesus went with him".
I want to pause and just deal with that for a moment, because to skip over Jairus does not do the text justice, yet Jairus is not the assignment for my preaching today. I want to point out that certain situations will make your position irrelevant. Certain situations will make it not matter that they call you a CEO. When there's no peace in your home, there's no position on your job that can make you feel good about your life. So, that issue that was happening in his home brought him to a low place, even though he occupied a high position.
Now remember, a synagogue ruler wasn't just somebody who stood and attended. It was someone who actually had some influence, yet he finds himself at the feet of this rabbi, this radical teacher, healer, and he wants to know, "Will you help me with this issue"? Now, I don't want to move too emotionally too fast, but some of us have completely had our positions upended over the course of the last several months. We find ourselves in a place we never thought we'd be. For Jairus, it was at Jesus' feet. That position of desperation, of course, is not unfamiliar to you unless you're under the age of 12. It just so happens that Jairus' daughter was 12, but Jairus encountered something (and you will if you live a little while) that made his position irrelevant. He did not announce himself by his title. He demonstrated his desperation by bringing his issue to the only one he thought had the ability to fix it.
I wonder if God has brought you to that place in this season of your life, where the things you used to try are no longer relieving the trouble anymore. He came to Jesus, which in itself is a miracle. It's a miracle that he could get to Jesus, because Jesus was so popular. This is the miracle Mark is highlighting in the text, yet there is an interruption to the miracle that forms my main point for my sermon today. The reason I stop to point that out is sometimes the miracles happen in the middle of the other things you think are more important. Have you ever noticed this? This is like a sandwich approach to Scripture. Jairus is asking Jesus to come and do something at his house. On the way, he gets interrupted, and now the thing he gets interrupted by becomes the main point of what Mark writes.
Luke wrote it too. Matthew wrote it too. When Luke wrote it, he wrote it differently because he was a doctor. He gave it from the perspective of a physician. But Mark is classifying this miracle on the basis of action. The Bible says, "A large crowd followed and pressed around Jesus. And a woman was there…" Here we go. I want to talk to you about this woman. You ask, "What's her name"? I would tell you if Mark told me. I checked Matthew. Maybe Matthew told us. He didn't tell us. I checked Luke. Luke didn't care to mention her by name either. What we do know is that she had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. She is identified by her issue. Doesn't it suck to be identified by your issue?
Last week I preached Water Walking. I talked about how the first time I ever preached on that text I was preaching at Moncks Corner United Methodist Church. Then I went on, as a 16-year-old… I've been preaching since I was 16. I didn't know anything about the Bible, but I was bold. I was a confident idiot. I would teach these kids on Wednesday night. I would feed them and then teach them.
One week, I was teaching about how God can do anything, and I was teaching about the woman in this text, but I didn't understand the background. I was 16 years old. I got there, teaching, and I was trying to make it come alive, make it interesting. I was trying to make it vivid. I said, "This woman had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. She comes up to Jesus, and she's bleeding all over the place". I was 16. I was stupid. I'm like, "She's bleeding all over the place". A 13-year-old boy who was there raises his hand. I call on him, and he says, "She wasn't bleeding on the outside, Steven. She was bleeding on the inside. She was hemorrhaging. It was a uterine infection". I'm like, "How do you even know about a uterus? You're 13"! "It was an internal issue, Steven. You couldn't see where she was bleeding".
You couldn't see where she was bleeding. Nobody sees where you're bleeding. That's a lonely feeling. Nobody sees what dominates and depresses you. They see what you show them, and your feed is clean. They don't see where you're bleeding. "It was an internal hemorrhage, Steven. Read the Bible". My man's voice hadn't even dropped, and he was dropping truth like a theologian. "You couldn't see where she was bleeding". You couldn't see where she was hurting, couldn't see where she was hemorrhaging. That's a tough place to be. If you walk up bleeding from your nose, I have tissues for that. If you walk up with blood on your face, it's going to cause me to stop in my tracks. She was bleeding in a place no one could see.
I feel like I need to stop and ask you to think about where you are bleeding that no one sees. Where are you hurting that no one has really heard about? Even though you generalize those places by saying, "Just pray for me; I need a financial breakthrough," really, the issue isn't that you need a financial breakthrough; it's that you don't even feel like a man anymore because you've lost your ability to provide, and if you can't even provide for your family, what good are you? You are bleeding not financially; you're bleeding on the inside. I'm bleeding, and no one sees it. Are you ready for this? Even Jesus didn't see the woman. "He sees all things". Not this time he didn't.
The Bible says… Do y'all believe the Bible? Can I read the Bible or do y'all want me to get a Dr. Seuss? "Oh, the places you'll go". Well, Jesus did not see this woman, but he felt her presence. That's going to be important in how I unpack this. It said, "A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse".
Isn't it crazy how some of the ways you try to feel better make you that much worse in the end? Have you ever done something to feel better but found out it actually made it worse? Have you ever ate something to feel better, and you felt better for five minutes, but about 3:00 a.m., the Devil sent you running to the toilet, talking about "It felt good"? It fixed it for a minute. You've been doing some things that fixed it for a minute. The Bible doesn't say she never felt better. The Bible says she didn't get better. I wonder if in this time of our lives, this time of trouble and transition and trauma and secret bleeding, if some of us are running to places where we are spending our energy and giving our attention to things that promise to make it better but end up making it worse.
My grandfather didn't have the Internet. He was at such a disadvantage. He couldn't just Google an answer. He had to actually talk to somebody. I have it so much better than him. I'm so much better off. "I want my kids to have it better than I had it". Sometimes what we think is better is based on a point of reference that has no grounding in reality. So, if you think about this… Again, we could take a vote. Okay. Church vote, eFam around the world. Everyone who thinks that being able to constantly share and access every opinion that has ever existed in humankind in an instant has made our ability to connect with one another that much better, say, "Aye". Y'all ain't saying nothin' in the chat.
Just because we have more ways to connect doesn't mean we're better at doing it, yet here's the flip: the only reason I'm able to preach this is because of the technology I'm preaching against. When Luke gets ready to share it, he doesn't say it quite like Mark says it. Mark says she spent all she had, but every doctor she went to made it worse. Luke is a physician, so he says, "Nobody could fix this woman". Mark seems to imply that there were some people taking advantage of her. Mark seems to imply that the motives of everyone she went to weren't so pure and so clean and so clear. Mark seems to imply that the founders of Facebook and the proprietors of Instagram are not primarily interested in your inspiration or that the news is not primarily interested in informing us.
So now I want to ask you a question. With the news on all week long, are you smarter or dumber on Friday? It's just a question. Answer it how you want to answer it. I just wonder, is it making it better? The place you go to to feel better, is it making it better? That's a question. Before long, you start to identify yourself with the information you receive. In this woman's case, she was getting worse, to the point that her issue had consumed her so totally she was only known by her issue. I love when the text lines up really pretty like this. How many of y'all really love the Bible? Not just the verse of the day, but you like to see that little hidden stuff, those little hospital corner tucks the Bible does.
Look at this. There's one man who is identified by his significance, Jairus, and one woman who is identified by her issue. There's one man who has a position, but he also has a dying daughter, so now his position is upended by what he's dealing with, just like the woman. Now, all of a sudden, the woman who is identified by her issue… That's why she's called, in the King James, the woman with the issue of blood. Every kid in my house has a nickname. How would you like for your nickname to be "The woman with the issue of blood"? How about it, Looshus?
That's what I call Abbey. It's a long story how it got there. It's a whole morphology of how my kids go by their nicknames. He was Graham, and then he was G, and then he was GT, and then he was GT McSwain, and then he was Swain, and then he was Schwig, and then he was Schwigalish, and then he was Lish. How would you like for your name to be Issues? Her name was Abbey, then it was Fafey, then it was Faf, then it was Foof, then it was Fief, then it was Leash, then it was Loosh, and now she's Loosh. There was a time when this woman had a name, but 12 years is a long time. Over time, she lost her name as she was consumed by her issue.
Now you start thinking things like, "I'm an addict". Now you start thinking things like, "I'm just a grumpy person". Now you start saying things like, "It's just in my genetics". But your genetics haven't met Jesus yet. Your genetics need to meet Jesus! When the woman's genetics met Jesus… I have a new nature! I'm going to come back to that. So, depression is something I deal with. I'm not depressed; I deal with depression. Do you understand what I'm saying? Just like that is true, it is also true of your achievements. Just like people will identify you with your issues, they will identify you with your position and achievement. Like the man who told me on the "Rattle"! YouTube comments…
I know I'm not supposed to look in those comments. I know I tell y'all not to do it, but do as I say, not as I do. I'm a hypocrite. The man said he saw me up there. I was singing on "Rattle!" having the time of my life. It was like Metallica, "Creeping Death" in reverse, James Hetfield singing, "Die! Die"! I mean, "You shall live! Live"! Best moment of my life. The man said, "Stay in your lane, Steve. Let the worship leaders lead worship. You preach the Word". First of all, worship… Y'all better understand where I'm coming from. Worship for me is not what happens before the sermon. Worship is how I make it through the worst moments of my life.
Secondly, I'm not what you thought I was, bro, BigDaddy423 in the YouTube comments. I'm not defined… You didn't make my lane. It's weird that we just call her "the woman" and we define her by her issue. We do it to ourselves all the time. You can even define yourself by how you feel in this moment, and that's dangerous. Let me teach for a moment. Do you define yourself by your emotions? Do you define yourself by your status? Do you define yourself by your lowest point? Do you define yourself by your highest achievement? All of that is dangerous, because the moment you start believing you are what you do or you are what you went through, it creates something inside.
The woman was bleeding on the inside. There is a bleeding on the inside that happens when your sense of self-worth flows from what you do and what you go through. Some of you may be very familiar with this text. The Lord put me on a clear direction since quarantine to only preach Scriptures I've preached before. I don't know when that's going to end, because there's a whole lot of good stuff I haven't preached in 14-1/2 years, but until further notice, I'm trying to go deeper in what I thought I knew. Every time, it's causing me to stop and see what I'm not seeing. This woman who was not seen by any people, even including Jesus who she needed a miracle from… Watch what she did. She self-activated.
That's what you did when you went on this stream today, by the way. You self-activated. You didn't wait for God to encourage you. You said, "I'm getting under the spout (this is old school) where the glory comes out". "As the deer pants for the streams of water, I'm going to get on a stream today that is going to hydrate my hope". This woman got in the flow of a miracle because she needed it. "I need it. I need God. I need God at the level not only of my conceptual abstraction but at the level of my feeling, my thought". Now this is what happened to her. "She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus…" So, that's the first thing she did. She heard.
I want you to notice she didn't get healed off of what she heard. This word can only do so much by hearing. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word of God, but faith without works is dead. James would say, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. [Instead, do] what it says". Let me tell you something. It's not going to get better because you took good notes. You can go to every Bible study and get worse and think you satisfied your intellectual quest for God, but this woman did not get healed because she heard. That was the first step. She heard. I think it's important that we put ourselves in the path of God's Word. Don't you? To put yourself in the path of the promises of God, to put yourself in the path of words of truth and words of life and words of grace and words of possibility.
I think that is so important, yet she didn't get healed when she heard. She heard about Jesus, and then, after she heard about Jesus… "When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak…" So, what do we have so far? She heard, she came, she touched. Maybe instead of waiting for a touch from God you just have to make up your mind, "I'm going to touch God myself. I'm going to praise God myself. I'm going to be grateful". Gratitude is a strategy. I need to feel God, so I'm going to get grateful for a minute, because I need to feel him. She came, she heard, she touched. "…because she thought, 'If I just touch his clothes…'" Do you see verse 28? "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed". Verse 29: "Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering".
So many questions I have about this text. How did Jesus not see her? Who did she think she was to sneak up on the Savior of the world when he was on his way to the deathbed of a dying little girl? Another question: Why didn't Jairus grab this lady by the throat and throw her out of the way? I would have done it if it would have been you. I'd throw any of y'all out of the way. I'd put you in a Figure-Four Leglock so Jesus could get to my house and heal my daughter. I'd put you in the Scorpion. Remember Sting? I'd be making up all kinds of moves. "Get out of my way. I've got a daughter who needs a touch". But one question I wanted to ask you… Maybe I'll ask Chris, because he's one of my best friends in the world. He won't mind me putting him on the spot. What stopped the woman's bleeding? Chris is like, "Jesus? I think it's Jesus, but I think this is a trick question". It is. It's a trick question.
All right, Brandon. You're down there at Seacoast with a real preacher preaching the Word. What would Josh Surratt say? The bleeding stopped because… For years, when I taught this text, I taught that when she touched Jesus that action which signified faith caused the flow of the bleeding to stop. The Bible says "Immediately…" Mark's favorite word to use to transition in his gospel: immediately. In the interconnectedness of all things, the moment Jesus stopped because the woman touched his garment (the edge of his garment, I might point out), Jairus' daughter lost her life. So, the gaining of life for the woman cost Jairus' daughter her life. Jesus went on to resurrect the little girl, but Jairus didn't know that.
Have you ever noticed how everything is connected? You don't see those connections in real time. Only in retrospect do you see the connection…the connection between the breaking you experienced and the blessing God had in mind, the connection between the loneliness you felt and the intimacy that was developed in that loneliness. You don't usually see those connections until later. When she made a connection… Like a phone hooking up to Wi-Fi. That's how I imagine it. She accessed his power when she touched his cloak. Why did her bleeding stop? I guess you could say it was when she made a connection with Jesus, but there's another connection that I never made. I always thought her healing started when she touched his cloak, but I read verse 28, and I found out the bleeding stopped because she thought. She heard, she came, she thought, she touched, and it stopped.
God said to tell you, "You can stop it with a thought". All caps: I CAN STOP IT WITH A THOUGHT. It's not stronger than me. I can stop it with a thought. I am not my issue. See, you've been going through what you've been going through so long you think the issue is you, but you can stop it with a thought. I mean, right now, the darkness that has overwhelmed you… You can stop it with a thought. Now, she did not get healed because she just thought. She got healed when she touched, but she only touched because she thought. It starts with a thought. When I think of the goodness of Jesus, when I think about the Lord, how he saved me (we used to sing this, Holly), how he raised me, how he filled me, how he healed me, how he reached down and rescued me… You can stop it with a thought.
The gates of hell will not prevail one thought about God. "My thoughts are not your thoughts". I can stop it with a thought. I found out thoughts are optional. I might have a thought, but I don't have to let the thought have me. I don't have to think like this, live like this, bleed like this! I don't have to die like this! Think of all of the ways he made! Think of all of the things he did! I've been thinking about the wrong things. I'm one thought away from joy, one thought away from healing. Thoughts are optional. Can I tell you how I know? If you did everything you thought, you'd have a prison ministry from the inside of the prison. Tim is so unsanctified he'd be in prison if he did everything he thought about since I've been preaching. It's kind of like a split screen to me. It's like probably what the other people thought when the woman was coming up and what she thought.
I almost called the message "Hold That Thought". She said, "If I touch him, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks". Once you get over the fact that other people's opinions… They are not limits; they are merely suggestions. Contrary to what your mom told you, you don't have to eat everything on your plate. You don't have to believe everything in your brain. The thought is optional. I imagine that the woman thought… "Because she thought…" That's what got me started on wanting to preach about this woman, because just like her bleeding started on the inside, so did her healing. "Because she thought…" But you can't see thoughts, so how does Luke know or Mark know or Matthew know what she thought? By what she did. I'll make a suggestion, and y'all can click over to an Andy Stanley sermon, or something, if you think I'm preaching heresy. What if she had a thousand other thoughts, yet the only one she acted on is the only one that mattered?
See, I can have a thousand thoughts, but the one I hold determines where I go. I bet she also thought… Can we talk about what the woman also thought? You've been sick 12 years. You've been to every doctor. You've been kicked out of every insurance policy. Nobody wants to hire you. You have preexisting conditions, so nobody wants to be with you. Twelve years. That's long enough to completely give up hope. That's long enough where she would have also thought… Here's the screen of what she did. Here's what she also thought. What's the point? "I've tried this before".
Some of y'all can't even hear a sermon well, because you got inspired last Sunday and you feel like you had an even worse week, so you don't even want to hear it anymore. "Cool, man. Whatever". I bet she had the thought, "Whatever". She heard about Jesus. "He's a healer". I bet she thought, "Whatever. I've seen this show before. What does he want? He just wants my money too". Do you ever think things? Even good things can be wrong things. I was talking to one of my friends this week who studied the creative process. I was like, "Give me a piece of advice on the creative process," because I'm constantly trying to create. I feel sometimes like I'm just bleeding, hemorrhaging the next sermon. My friend said, "Hey, make sure you rest while you're working and let your spirit work on your sermon too". I was like, "All right. Cool".
I don't know really how to rest, because I identify myself by what I do. I tend to associate my worth with my work. I always thought I was only as good as my trophy, only as good as my achievement. So here's what I said back to my friend. I said, "That's really cool. I love that advice to rest and just let my spirit work on my sermon, let my subconscious work on my material. That's a great creative tip". I said, "It's kind of like when a computer renders". My friend said, "Yeah. Kind of like that, but you're not a computer". I'm not what I thought. My friend was trying to get me to see, "You've got the right idea, but you've got the wrong identity. You're not an object. You're not a machine".
I know every parent sometimes feels like a vending machine, and then an Uber, and then a referee. What else do you feel like? Parents, what do you feel like sometimes? I feel like if I'm not driving them somewhere, cleaning something up… I'm a housekeeper. I'm a short-order chef. But that's not all I am. "Stay in your lane, Steve! Be a preacher". That's not all I am. Do you feel God on that? That's not all I am. Now, that might be all I've experienced up to this point, but that's not all I am. My genetics just haven't met Jesus yet. I'm not just the woman with the issue of blood. That's not all I am. I'm not just Jairus, the synagogue leader. I'm also a dad. I need ministry. I need a touch. I need refreshing. I need a flow. I need a prayer answered. Yeah. That's not all I am. I'm not what I thought I was. I'm so much more than I thought I was.
How many times have I limited what I could receive because of what I thought I was? Because she thought, she touched, and because she touched, the bleeding stopped. Do you know what's really crazy? Instead of getting back on the road to get to Jairus' daughter, the one who was more important, Jesus stopped in verse 30. Here we see in the Scripture the first instance of contact tracing. The Bible says Jesus stopped. So, her bleeding stopped. Jesus stopped, and he realized power… There's power in a thought. She thought, she touched, and Jesus said, "I felt that". Now remember, she heard, she came, she thought, she touched, she felt. Feelings follow thoughts. Jesus stops and goes, "Whoa. I felt something," and the woman is like, "I did too". It started with a thought. Feelings start with thoughts.
So, next time you wonder when you're in a bad mood, or something like that, like, "Oh my god. It's like the weather just changed on the inside. What happened"? Do some contact tracing with your thoughts. For some of y'all, this is going to mean you're not going to be texting everybody back this week. "I did some contact tracing, and I found out every time I text you, it's trouble for me". Isn't the Bible so up to date? Isn't the Bible so 2020? Look at the Bible. The Bible said Jesus stopped, and he turned around and said, "Who touched my clothes"? The disciples are annoyed, not just because they don't want to go back through and do the paperwork to find out who had COVID and who was exposed and six feet distance. None of that. Watch what the disciples said. Verse 31. It doesn't say it was Peter, but I bet it was.
"'You see the people crowding against you,' his disciples answered, 'and yet you can ask, "Who touched me"?'" Your feelings come so fast, don't they? It's hard to even know where it started. It's like, "You want us to trace it all the way back? Jesus, we don't have time to stop and talk about your feelings. Jairus' daughter is dying. We can stop and break it all down if you want to, but it's a lot of people, and it's a lot of stuff".
I was telling Eric the other day, I try to figure out why I'm in a bad mood, but if I tried to trace everything that made me in a bad mood back, I'd never go anywhere. I'd never get out of bed. Some days, sunny weather makes me depressed because I think I should be outside enjoying it. Some days, rainy weather makes me depressed because it's raining. I can't trace anything back. It just comes so fast. "Who touched me"? "A lot of people were touching you. A lot of things are happening. The world is really crazy right now". He said, "No, no, no. Who touched me"? Verse 32: "But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it". I know we don't live by our feelings, but sometimes we need to focus on our feeling and see what led to it. Jesus is like, "Who touched me? Who touched me"? He didn't see her because she came up from behind. And the woman, who was only used to being a nuisance or an inconvenience…
How many of you have ever felt like you were a nuisance because that's the way other people treated you? Or that's what you thought they thought. How stupid is it to be trapped in what you thought they thought? This is called thought tracing. Not contact, just thought tracing. "Well, I think they thought… They did that because they thought…" The woman thought she was in trouble, and the reason I know she thought she was in trouble when Jesus stopped on the way to Jairus' house is because when she came up (verse 33), the Bible says, descriptively, she came back and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear… She thought she was in trouble, but she wanted to tell the truth. She heard, she came, she thought, she touched, she felt, she told. "It was me".
I don't mean this in any kind of stereotypical way, but the fact that she was a woman makes me think she didn't give Jesus the plot summary, because my wife doesn't give me plot summaries or CliffsNotes. She told him the whole truth, what it had been like to bleed on the inside, what it had been like to once have resources, and as you spend all of your resources, your issue continues to deteriorate your reality. She told him that. Trembling, she told him, "I know I wasn't supposed to stop you. I know I caused a big commotion. I know you were on your way to heal that important man's daughter". Jesus stopped and said, "Who did it"? It seems petty that he would stop healing somebody to come fuss at somebody. He said, "Who did it"? I wondered why he did it. When I read his response after she told him the whole truth… It says in verse 34 that he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering". But she was already freed from her suffering. When she touched him, "Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering". She was already free.
Why did he call her back? Not to reprimand her. Maybe he called her back to give her a little bit more money or a little bit more details or maybe to give her a little extra help. I read that over and over again. Do you remember how she snuck up and said, "If I just touch the hem of his garment"? The dirty part, the part that has been dragging through the street with feces and urine and the mud off the shoes of the feet of the other important people as they move through the street to do things she no longer had the resources to do. That's all she thought she was. "If I touch it… And then I'll sneak away". She snuck away like a thief. They couldn't find her. She snuck away like she stole something. He said, "Who did it? Bring her back".
Then he told her what she already knew. Why did he call her back and let Jairus' daughter die just to tell her what she already knew? Then I realized something. It's not what he told her; it's what he called her. He didn't call her, "Woman with the issue of blood". We call her that. He didn't. There are many times in Scripture that Jesus touches people and they're healed. There are very few where someone touches him, and there's only one time in Scripture that Jesus calls somebody "Daughter". This is the only time Jesus uses that term. Why did he stop on the way to heal Jairus' daughter? Because there was another daughter who forgot that she was a daughter.
So, I'm not going to let you sneak away like a beggar. If I let you sneak away right now, the bleeding may stop, but you will live the rest of your life believing something about yourself that isn't true. What would you do if you knew it was true that you were a daughter of God? What would it be like if you knew that almighty, omnipotent, all-powerful God had committed his resources to you, like weak little Steven Furtick has committed his resources to Abbey? What would you do? What could knock you off your balance? What could the opinions of others do to you if you knew, "I am not what I did, and I am not what I went through, and I am not what I thought I was, and I am not what I suffered, and I am not what I lost"? Jesus said, "Call her back. I know Jairus has a daughter, but she's a daughter too. I know nobody else sees her, but that's my daughter".
I need you to receive this word. You don't have to touch the dirty part, the limited part. "I'm not what I thought. I am not my temptation. I am not my perversion. I am not my discouragement. I am not my last mistake. I am not my pattern. I am not my flesh. I have been crucified with Christ. If I can touch him, I can have what he has, because I am like he is. I'm a daughter. I'm a son". He called her back so she would know, "You're not leaving like a thief. You're not leaving like a beggar. You're leaving like a daughter. Don't you crawl out of here waiting to get caught". She thought she was in trouble, but Jesus brought her back to tell her the truth. She was bleeding on the inside, and she did something on the outside, but God didn't just want to fix what was happening in her body.
She heard about Jesus, and that freed her from her suffering, but when she heard from Jesus, not about Jesus, it freed her from her shame. Lift your hands in the air right now. I break the power of shame off of your mind. I break the power of shame off of your past. I break the power of shame off of your body. You're going to feel it in your body right now that healing is flowing to you. Identity is flowing to you. God said, "I stopped everything for the forgotten daughter". I have a daughter. I know what you would do for your daughter. My two boys criticize my parenting all the time. They say, "You treat Abbey differently". They say, "You do stuff for her that you won't do for us". They say, "She doesn't get in trouble for stuff. You used to punish us for stuff that she doesn't get in trouble for".
One day, she heard them going on and on about this. She said, "Guys, it's different. I'm the daughter". I mean, even if you're a male… I'm not trying to make this about gender, but just say, "It's different when you're a daughter". It's different when you know that you belong. "I'm not sneaking in to get a healing. I will be made whole". She thought, she touched, she felt, she told, and then she knew. You might have come crawling, but you're walking away. Whatever time zone this message finds you in or whatever season of life… You could be Jairus or you could be this daughter. How cool is it that the one who nobody saw coming is the only one he ever called "Daughter"?
I don't know. Maybe you don't feel forgotten, but in case you do, the one the disciples didn't even think was worth tracking down is the only one he called "Daughter". Jairus had a daughter, but she was a daughter too. You belong to him. When you go troubleshooting your soul, make sure you don't go to the wrong doctors that'll make it worse instead of better. Don't do it. I'm really bad at troubleshooting, but I know if it gets bad enough, I have to take this back to Apple. Some things can only be diagnosed by the manufacturer. Sometimes I need to take it to the Genius Bar. Some things I need to take to Jesus. I'm not what I thought. "You mean I'm not the woman with the issue of blood"? When we get to heaven, we'll all have nicknames, and it won't be "The woman with the issue of blood".
This woman, I can imagine, because she's bold, will be standing there at the front of the line. In case you feel unworthy, in case you feel like you can't come in, she's going to be like, "Hey, you might remember me from Mark, chapter 5". "Oh yeah. Woman with the issue of blood". "Nah, nah, nah. The only one he ever called 'Daughter.'"
Come on, if you have bold faith, if you have grace faith, not works faith. I'm not what I did! I'm not what they said! I'm not what I'm going through! Lord, bless your sons and daughters today. Call them by name. I don't know their names. You do. God, I thank you for Jay. I thank you for Cherelle. I thank you for Betty and for Sharon. I thank you for Ebony. God, I thank you for Peter and for Grace and for Cammie and for Kelly. You're calling them by name. These are your daughters…Julia and Mary and Tamala and Nicole. Oh, they're going so fast. Look at all of those daughters and sons. They're not leaving this sermon today bleeding on the inside. Give them a thought to hold on to. "I'm accepted. I'm loved". Get that thought and hold on for dear life, and you will be healed, in Jesus' name.
Take just a second and say, "I'm not what I thought". Right there in the chat. "I'm not what I thought". Maybe you need to send a message to somebody who underestimated you. "I'm not what you thought. You told me I'd never amount to anything, but I touched somebody who knows something you don't know. I'm getting this fixed on the inside. I am a child of God". We bless your name, Lord. Thank you for your grace. Our teams are here right now to minister to you. If you have a prayer request, put it in the chat. In fact, right now, one of our team members is going to lead you in a prayer to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and be made whole again. Right now, we're praying with you.