Sunday, August 1, 2021

Mark 5 Devotions by Stephen Taylor

Mark 5:17-18

Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. 

 

This morning, I was reading the story of Jesus driving out the demon legion in the book of Mark, and the Holy Spirit showed me something that I feel led to share with you! After Jesus drives out the demon, you see two different responses, both begging Jesus for something:

 

One response is begging Him to leave, and the other is begging to go with Him! One is saying, “I don’t care where You go, but You can’t stay here,” and the other is saying, “I don’t care where You're going; just take me with You!” One group is wanting to stay in darkness, and the other is longing to live in the Light! So, my question is, which one are you?

 

I’m sure most of you answered that you were the guy wanting to go with Jesus, but let me show you how the Holy Spirit revealed it to me in today’s terms. You go to church, and you have a “come to Jesus moment”. Tears are flowing, hearts are breaking, and you see Him moving all around you. Fast forward two hours later, and you're trying to forget Him and your moment with Him so you can abuse your family or cheat your neighbor, or go watch pornography, or whatever sin it may be that you’re trying to live in but can’t because Jesus is shining His glorious light on it! It’s no different than the two responses found in these verses!

 

Do you notice the guy wanting to go with Jesus doesn’t even ask Him where He is going? Why? Because it doesn’t matter where. It matters Who!!! When we have that personal experience with the Lord, we can either beg Him to leave so we can stay bound in our sin, or we can beg Him to take us with Him because we know He holds our freedom! So, today, the question is this: will you beg Jesus to go with Him, or will you beg Him to get out?

 

Galatians 5:1 - It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

 

God bless! I love you all!!! Glory, Honor, and Praise forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit! 

 

 

Mark 5:17-18

Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with Him.

We see two dramatically different reactions to Jesus’ deliverance and restoration of the man with many demons. They both respond desperately and definitively. The world around the man responds with a desperate plea for Christ to leave, but the one who has been redeemed or delivered responds with a desperate plea to go with Christ. Which of these categories do we fall into? Are we saying, “Not right now, Jesus, just go on somewhere till I need You?” Or are we saying, “Lord, I need You, and I just want to be where You’re at?”

This man had suffered for a long time, yet his response wasn’t to go back to his life before Christ but to start a new life with Him! I want to be more like the man who begged to go with Christ and less like the people who begged Him to leave. This can only happen through the power and sanctification of the Holy Spirit. He teaches us how to be more like Christ and less like ourselves. He illuminates our hearts and minds, allowing us to walk in the Spirit so we won’t gratify the desires of the flesh.

This all starts with surrender, my friends. We must surrender our hearts, our minds, our lives, and our sins to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then receive the Holy Spirit and learn to walk in Him! Jesus may not have allowed this man to go with Him, but He definitely went with this man and used him to spread the Good News about Christ and what He had done for him! Can we do the same?

Mark 5:19,20- Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.

God bless! I love you all, but His love redeems the rejected! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!

 

Mark 5:22,23

Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at His feet. He pleaded earnestly with Him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.”

Do we bring it all to the feet of Jesus? It’s pretty natural to bring the big things, the heavy things, and the overwhelming things to Him, but do we bring everything? We see Jairus come running and bringing his desperate need to Jesus, and rightly so because this is something so far beyond his control only God Himself can do it. But do we do the same with our everyday affairs?

Do we run to Christ over the guy who cut us off in traffic like we do when we get a bad report from the doctor? Do we bring our daily lives to Him? Good or bad, big or small, it doesn’t matter; it all needs to be brought to Him. We can’t section up our lives and say, “Okay, Lord, you can have this and this, but I will take this and that.” It doesn’t work like that, and when we try to handle things on our owns, it leaves us in a worse situation than what we started.

The enemy will tell us that God is too busy for that or that it’s just a little thing you should be able to handle that on your own, but those are lies straight from the darkness. We were never created to handle things on our own. God didn’t put Adam in a garden by himself. God gave Adam a personal relationship with Himself and then gave him Eve. There was Adam and God before there was ever Adam and Eve. Now God is merciful and generous to give us people to walk this path with, but we must first take it all to the Lord and then seek wise counsel from those around us.

So today, will we take it all to Him and take it to Him first? Or will we continue to struggle carrying stuff we were never intended to beat? Thank You, Jesus, for Your patience and willingness to listen to our hearts and help us in every situation!

Psalm 55:22- Cast your cares on the LORD, and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken.

God bless! I love you all, but His love is listening! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!

 

Mark 5:25-29

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. 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.

Will we lose sight of our faith in the midst of deep desperation? This woman suffered terribly – emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually – yet she did not waver in her faith before Christ. She did not let the past defeats and the enemy's taunts keep her from reaching out and touching the Lord’s garment in faith.

We, like this woman, are going to have seasons of hardship, some lasting longer than others and some being deeper than we ever could have imagined. But will we lose our faith in those times? Embracing the fact that these days will come for each one of us is a way to help prepare us for the inevitable. Christ promised we would have trouble in this life, and if you stopped reading there, you would be left with an empty feeling, but continue to read and rejoice in the fact that He has overcome the world, and if we are in Him, then we too can rejoice in the victory!

Imagine if this woman hadn’t reached out to Christ? What if she would have just stayed buried in her affliction and destroyed by her desperation, when the Answer, the Healer, the Hope of the world was right in front of her. How sad a story that would have been! But praise God that she did not do that; instead, she reached out in faith and touched the very edge of His garment and was set free!

So today, whatever season you’re walking through, be encouraged that He is still moving, still available, still able, and still willing to heal you; just keep pressing on and reaching out on faith! Whether it’s in this life or the next, everyone that has a reverent love relationship with Jesus Christ built on faith will be made whole!

John 16:33- “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Romans 8:37-No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

God bless! I love you all, but His love is power! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit! 

 

Mark 5:41,42

He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.

This is part of the story of Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead. There is much depth here and many truths to be learned, but there is one in specific I felt led to share as the Holy Spirit shared it with me. It was not Jesus touching her that raised her but rather the word He spoke over her and to her. So why did He take her by the hand? This question then led to another question; how do you lead a child?

The answer, of course, is by taking their hand and walking with them. So, I see Christ taking her by the hand and leading her from death to life. The word He spoke over her healed her, but He walked hand in hand with her through that valley of death back to life! Guess what? He is still doing that with us today! Thank You, Jesus!

He speaks life into us while He intimately and intentionally holds us by the hand in order to lead us through the process in Him! He doesn’t leave us out here to figure it out for ourselves but is willing to reach out and lead the dead and lost back to life! We, like this little girl, had no hope until Hope Himself walked through the door, took us by the hand, and roused us from our death bed, and said get up; it’s time to live! The greatest Physician ever known to man never went to medical school, but He did go to the cross for you and me to be healed!

Isaiah 53:4-6- Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Thank You, Jesus! God bless! I love you all, but His love is reaching out for you today; will you respond? Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!

 

 

 

 

 

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