The Woman from Luke 8 - The Power of Perseverance

In Luke 8, the Bible introduces us to a woman who has had a medical condition debilitating her life for more than a decade. Through this woman’s persistence and perseverance, she is able to find Jesus and find healing through her belief in Him. This episode of Wifey Wednesdays focuses on the importance of persevering through hardship and difficulty and darkness. If you are struggling with something, use the example of this woman and reach out to Jesus. If we will keep seeking Him and reaching out to Him then He is able to help us in our time of need and, ultimately, deliver us from all of the bad that this broken world brings.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Emily Hatfield

Author, Podcaster, Ladies Speaker

What is Wifey Wednesdays?

Wifey Wednesdays: A show for women that focuses on the Titus 2 principle: learning to love our husband and our children, and being the keepers at home that God intends for us to be. Wifey Wednesdays, hosted by Emily Hatfield, is released every Wednesday.

Hello and welcome to Wifey Wednesdays, a podcast for women who are seeking to be the best wives they can be. I’m your host, Emily Hatfield, and this is the show where the plan is always to do things God’s way, especially our marriages.

If you are up to date on your listening, then this week is Thanksgiving! And while I didn’t necessarily plan to have this woman be this week, it feels oh so appropriate as I am thinking about gratitude and thankfulness.

Today we are going to be looking at a woman whose name we don’t know but whose impact was huge. And, we are going to be talking about perseverance, and maybe - hopefully - that will make sense when we’ve talked through her rather familiar story.

So today’s woman is simply known as a woman who had a flow of blood for 12 years. Right, that woman. The one who stops Jesus and His entire processional as He are going to raise a dead little girl. Now, to be fair, this woman doesn’t mean to stop everything and put the focus on her. Instead, she thinks to herself, ‘If I can just touch the hem of His garment I will be made clean.’

That’s exactly what happens. She grabs His garment and power goes out of Him (and I’d like to know more about that) and she is healed. Instantly. And everything stops right along with the blood flow. Jesus asks, “Who touched me?” And it’s a big crowd and everyone’s close and brushing up against and the disciples are like - what do you even mean?! But this was different than brushing past Jesus. This woman was intentional. This woman reached out for healing. This woman sought Jesus for cleansing. And for her faith she was made well and made clean.

Under Jewish law, she would have been unclean for 12 years. 12 long years of always being unclean and making the things and people around her unclean. This had to have been ostracizing socially, and physically draining. Remember the initial days of 2020? Maybe at first when we all had to isolate at home all of us introverts were like, hooray! But after a while, it got monotonous and lonely, not being able to interact with people. And we live in a time of social media. We weren’t actually cut off from most people, but we still felt it. Magnify that by hundreds. And then, I think about her physical condition. After my daughter was born, I had a postpartum hemorrhage, which is another story for another time if you’d like to hear about how I probably should have died…but alas. I can speak to how physically draining it is to be losing blood. And maybe it’s not very much; maybe it’s just a constant, slow thing. Even still. If you have ever been a menstruating female then you know how physically draining even a very common and relatively light time of the month is.

On top of all of that, she’d spent all of her money trying to be made well, and everyone had taken the money but no one had ever healed her. How depressing. How hard, financially, to keep enduring this.

For more than a decade, this woman had to have been going through awful things, mentally, emotionally, socially, and physically. And she just wants to be healed. So she puts herself out there, 12 years into this thing, because she’s heard that there’s someone who can heal her.

She believed Jesus had the power to heal, and she went toward Him. She reached out, even though everything else had been hopeless - even though it was crowded and really, kind of an inopportune time from everybody else’s perspective. But Jesus had time for her. Jesus took time for her. Her faith made her well.

So why is this called the power of perseverance? Mostly because I think about how hard things were, and how long they had been so hard, and I think about how - even 12 years in - she didn’t give up on being made well, and she didn’t give up on God. Perhaps she had prayed. Perhaps she had tried to go somewhere near the temple, though being unclean would complicate things. Maybe she cried out to God and His answer had been no up to this point — or really, maybe it had been wait. Wait for something better. You’re going to want to endure this for a while longer because the blessing of having the Messiah heal you will be worth it all.

Friend, I don’t know what you’re going through today, but I need you to keep going. I need you to keep fighting. I need you to keep trusting. Even if you are in a really hard season. Even if the answers to your prayers have been no, or maybe wait. I need you to know that you are not alone in whatever fight or struggle or hardship you are in. If it’s physical, emotional, financial, spiritual…you aren’t alone and it isn’t hopeless. And, just like it was the case for this woman in Luke 8, so it is for us — Jesus is the answer.

Getting closer to Jesus is the answer. Falling at His feet is the answer. Reaching out to Him is the answer. Grabbing hold of the hem of His garment is the answer. You may feel like you’re holding on by a thread, but I tell you - that thread, if it’s on Jesus’ robe, then it’s strong enough to keep you tethered to a God who has said that no one and nothing can pluck you out of His hand — nothing can separate you from His love. If you’ll keep holding on, if you’ll keep reaching out, He is faithful to guard you and keep you and help you.

How easy would it have been for this woman to give up? I mean, it had been more than a decade. Why hadn’t she just resigned that she was this way and that was that?? I’m sure she could have gone through more of her life in the state she was in. But if she had given up and lost faith, she would have missed an opportunity to see Jesus.

I think that’s true for us, too. If we lose heart, if we give up, if we resign to the fact that maybe Satan’s just won this round — then we might lose the opportunity to see the goodness of God on display through the hardship and the ugly and the difficult.

I will be honest with you, there have been some really, really dark days in my life. There were some really hard days after my daughter was born that I was struggling so very severely mentally, that I didn’t know how I could make it. And there have been days since; there have been days even within the last month that have been incredibly dark — when the temptation has been, give up. Where the voices against me have been louder than the Spirit. And on those days, I have relied on the hem of His garment. I haven’t been holding much, but He has held me together. He has not let me be lost in the crowd. He has not let me go unnoticed. He has seen and been a very present help in time of need.

I want you to lock this truth into your heart: you will never be loved less by God than you are right now. You can’t do anything that will make Him love you less, or do anything to make Him turn away from you and not care. You will always be loved and cared for by your Creator, who longs for you to be with Him forever. Jesus died so that you - you personally - would be able to one day meet Him face to face. He wants to see you in the crowd. He wants to single you out, just as He did this woman. Because He knows the sheep by name, and He cares for us.

Don’t let Satan’s lies cry out louder than the truth that God has given: He who is in us is greater than He who is in the world. If we will persevere — if we will just keep reaching for Him — we will find Him. He will keep us. He has claimed the victory over Satan and in His grace He has cleansed us with His blood so that we can have a share in the victory, too. So please keep going. Please keep reminding yourself that the world wouldn’t be better without you - that your life IS significant because Jesus died for you. You are loved. You are seen. You are held in high esteem by the God of this universe. And He has a plan for you - a plan that involves you being with Him forever. The crown of life is waiting for all those who will overcome; all those who will keep fighting the good fight of faith, looking to Jesus while we run the race set before us.

I know darkness. I know grief. I know pain. I know struggle. I know depression. More than that, I know my Lord. I know the Creator. And He is stronger than any of those things and all of those things combined, and He is able to be glorified through the brokenness of this world and to one day wipe them all out and give us the victory over them. Until then, we have to keep fighting. You, me, everybody. We have to keep going. And if you’re struggling - if you are feeling like you don’t want to keep going or you don’t know how you possibly could because of whatever you are facing right now — please reach out. If you don’t feel like you can reach out to me, reach out to someone. Most importantly, most especially, do as the woman with the flow of blood did and reach out to Jesus. His healing power is available. His cleansing blood is there for us. The peace that passes understanding is ready to guard our hearts and minds.

I love you. God loves you. Please don’t ever forget, and please don’t ever stop running to and reaching out to Him.

Thank you for listening. Until next time remember - love God, love your husband.