Grabbing the Robe

Monday, May 13, 2013

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I was ten years old, and I had one of the most frightening moments of my life. I was out with some of my friends about my age in Lake Michigan, and for some reason I panicked in the water and I started to go under. I can still remember it as if it was today. I really, really felt like I was going to die. Now, unfortunately, my friends didn't take my cries for help seriously at first. "Oh, there's Ron! He's clowning around! He's goofing off!" I guess that's the price you pay for being a clown, which I guess I was...and am. Well, I began to flail around; I was desperately trying to save myself. Someone finally saw me. I mean, they saw I was really in trouble and they came to my rescue. And when they did, I quit thrashing, I quit trying to swim, and because I did they were able to rescue me. You know why? I quit trying to rescue myself!

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Grabbing the Robe."

Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Mark chapter 5. I'll begin reading at verse 25, "And the woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors, she had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak because she thought, 'If I just touch His clothes, I will be healed.' Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering."

Well, here's a lady who had spent years thrashing around, in a sense, trying to save herself, and every time she goes under. Then when she had run out of human solutions and earthly resources, she almost literally lunged for Jesus. Here's a desperate woman grabbing His robe and she got the answer that had eluded her all those years. You know what? That's probably the only way you'll get your answer.

See, there's a condition that God can do the most with. It's called desperation. When I'm out of answers, I'm willing to admit I'm out of answers. It's a total abandonment of faith in any solutions I can come up with, any faith in human resources. I'm past that; I'm desperate. At that point, you can choose to go to the Lord broken and powerless, but we usually have to be driven there. But there's no condition God can do more with than powerlessness. It's the most powerful position you could be in. See, we already are powerless; we don't have the resources. We just have to get to the point where we know it and we'll admit it.

Why do we wait until we're driven to the edge? We North American Christians have so many other resources we can trust in. Other believers in other parts of the world only have God. Actually that's all we have too.

Maybe you've been trying to plan an answer, or engineer an answer, politic it, manipulate it, talk an answer, work an answer, you prayed but not in desperation. You still have other things you're depending on. God is using this need to teach you one of life's sweetest lessons: Jesus is enough. He's the source. You learn that, not when you casually approach Him to help you, but when you lunge for Him, cry out to Him, come broken to Him, and grab His robe. It's only when you realize when Jesus died on the cross to become your Rescuer from your sin, because there was nothing you could do to rescue yourself, that you finally change your eternal destination from hell to heaven; where you finally experience having every sin of your life forgiven, the peace of knowing that when you die you will be in heaven with Him.

Maybe this is that day for you - your day of personal rescue. Take it from a boy who almost drowned, thrashing around getting nowhere. As long as I was flailing around I was pretty hard to rescue. So are you. Your religion, your goodness will never get you to heaven. It cannot possibly pay the death penalty for your sin.

We'd love to show you the way to begin that relationship with Him. Just go to our website YoursForLife.net. When you know you're going down for the third time and you grab your Savior, you will finally be safe in those arms that have wanted to carry you all along.