Matthew 15:21-28 / Mark 7:24-30…
Scrapping for scraps…
Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Paul, and all the great people of prayer throughout history have experientially known the truth that sometimes God makes us fight for our blessings. He wants us to prevail in prayer, but He insists we persevere.
This woman was not being insulted by Jesus. He was drawing out her faith. Her answer is wonderful. She had humility with passionate hunger, instead of resentment and anger about her situation. She only knew that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah who came to heal people, and for some reason He was in her town. Christ went into Gentile territory and did this miracle for a Gentile woman who had greater faith than the Jews who were rejecting Jesus.
She had a fighting faith. She had to fight the doubts about why Jesus would want to help her, a Gentile. She had to fight the crowd; it would be very hard to get them to hear her. But imagine having to fight through all that and then to have Jesus act with seeming indifference (But he did not answer her a word). She had to fight the urge to give up, listening to Jesus tell His disciples she wasn’t worth the trouble (I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel), then getting on her knees and Jesus still not seeming to want to help her (It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs).
This woman can teach us a lot about prevailing in prayer. She knew that faith was obediently seeking for the Master, despite a seeming initial rejection of her request. We are not ready to handle every blessing God has for us until we are ready to wrestle and rest at the same time. Jesus wants us to draw near, and it will be worth it, but what it takes is humility, persistence, and worship. We have to be able to say, “I’ll take the scraps if they come from your table!” Just one crumb from the Bread of Life is all we need.
Would you go the distance for someone’s deliverance if Jesus made you fight for it?
3 comments:
wrestle and rest....challenging yet doable. Praying that God will intervene yet trusting how and when is for the best.
Fight for someone else? It seems that when we are willing to and actually follow through fighting for someone's deliverance if/when we are in need of deliverance we may be delivered also.
The smallest morsel of Jesus can take you home to glory!
All good points...
It seems that when we are willing to and actually follow through fighting for someone's deliverance if/when we are in need of deliverance we may be delivered also.
Exactly...
Sadly I have a hard time when there is no resistance. Lord help us all to have compassion for one another.
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