Breakthrough Faith After Chronic Suffering and Hopelessness {Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon}

Have you experienced chronic illness or longtime suffering? Or maybe you know someone who has experienced the isolation and hopelessness of having no where else to turn. It can feel like God has forgotten you, or his back is turned to you. But in this story, we're going to watch a breakthrough moment, where a woman finds out what has been actually true all along.

Guests: Hope Blanton and Christine Gordon

Bible Passage: Luke 8:42-48 ESV

Get your Freebie: The Live Like It's True Workbook

Mentioned Resources

• At His Feet Studies
• Luke, Part I: A Study of Luke 1-8 (At His Feet Studies)
• Encounters with Jesus by Gary Burge (tampon story, page 39)

At His Feet Studies

Each lesson in an At His Feet Study consists of four steps: reading the Scripture passage, answering observation questions, reading commentary about the passage, and answering application questions helping you apply the text to your life. Also included is a “focus verse” for memorization. Below are all of the studies available from At His Feet.

Connect with Hope and Christine

Website: At His Feet Studies

Instagram: @athisfeetstudies

Facebook: @athisfeetstudies

Shaped by God's Promises: Lessons from Sarah on Fear and Faith 
     {buy now}

Comparison Girl for Teens
     {buy now}

Get our free "Pray God's Promises" prayer guide.

Go to Shannonpopkin.com/PROMISES/ for more information on my neww Bible study, Shaped by God’s Promises: Lessons from Sarah on Fear and Faith. 

Visit ResoundMedia.cc for the Live Leadership Podcast, along with other Gospel centered resources.

Transcript

Shannon Popkin: 1:37

Have you experienced chronic illness or a long time suffering? Maybe you know somebody who has experienced isolation and hopelessness that comes from having nowhere else to turn. In those times, it could literally feel like God has forgotten you or he's turned his back on you. But in this story about the woman who had the chronic bleeding for 12 years, we're going to experience a breakthrough moment where she finds out what has actually been true all along. I'm so excited to invite my friends, hope and Christine, to talk through this story with me. They are the authors of At His Feet studies, and their thought behind this name At His Feet was that in this time, rabbis would often have their disciples sit at their feet while they talked in the time of Jesus. But there's a verse that says that Mary, a woman, sat at the feet of Jesus and got to learn from him as a rabbi, and so we, as women, also get to sit at the feet of Jesus, and I feel like that's how this conversation feels to me with Hope and Christine. It's like we're sitting at the feet of Jesus together and we saved you a spot, so you're going to love this conversation.

Shannon Popkin: 2:47

Let me tell you a little bit about our guests first. So Christine is a graduate of Covenant Seminary in St Louis and she now works as a visiting instructor there. She's been involved in women's ministry for many years, helping women more deeply understand the Bible. Christine is a wife and mom of three, and so is Hope, and she is a therapist in the San Antonio Texas area. She invests her years of experience helping women dig into their hearts with creating the questions in their At His Feet studies. So you are going to love this conversation. I can't wait to share it with you today. Hope and Christine, welcome to Live Like it's True. Hi, thank you. Well, it's just been so fun to get to know you a little bit. I wondered do you have any chronic illness in your past?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 3:35

That's a great question. It depends on what you define as illness.

Shannon Popkin: 3:38

Oh yeah, I know I've got a lot of chronic things. I don't know if they count as illnesses.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 3:42

Chris and I would both say that we both have chronic mental health struggles, which I think the therapist I would say would qualify as chronic illness. It's different, sure, chris? What would you say, too, about one of your children? Yeah Well, I also have degenerative disc disease, and so it just means I have to be really careful with my back and I easily get to a place where walking is hard and driving is hard. All the things are hard. That's physical, and I have children with some pretty severe chronic issues, diseases, yeah, yeah.

Shannon Popkin: 4:13

And it's so interesting. It's not like when we were chatting at the beginning, we didn't bring that up, right. Yeah, it's like you don't really want to talk about that. It's like the last thing you really want to talk about. Just from my experience, when I discover a new friend has some sort of chronic pain or chronic illness, like that is the last thing you get to.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 4:33

That's right yeah.

Shannon Popkin: 4:35

I just wonder if the story about this woman she would love for us to be talking about anything but this. That's right.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 4:42

Yeah, because so often chronic illness is something that people don't want to be defined by. They don't want to have it and so and it's like this thing that's stuck on them that they can't get rid of, and so it's not something that they want to talk about because it's not a choice they made.

Shannon Popkin: 4:56

Yes, it's so true. I remember driving in a car one day with a group of women and there was one in the backseat and I was talking with the one beside me in the front seat and let's just say it was like a child with anxiety. That was not what we were talking about, but she was pouring out her heart and sharing like this story. And so I called the one in the backseat and I'm like you should connect with her. You guys have similar stories. And she just shut the whole thing down and what she told me later is Shannon, you don't understand. Like I don't want that to be the first thing someone knows about me, like I don't want to be defined by this, like I don't want to be boxed in, like this isn't who I want to introduce myself as. And I was like I'm so sorry, I didn't intend that. I just was thinking, oh, you should connect because you have similar pain, struggles.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 5:44

Right, it reminds me of my daughter has a disease that is very visual, and so she said I have this thing that makes me obvious to everyone that I have it, and I'm the person that doesn't like to be seen in every room. You know, it's like, it's so hard, that tension, and so it makes sense that like that person was like ah yes, so well, we're going to be talking about the story of the bleeding woman.

Shannon Popkin: 6:07

This is from Luke, chapter eight, and this is a woman who has been through it. And what's interesting about what you just said hope is your daughter has this visible thing about her. This woman, I think, probably just has an endless period, right, and yet in this culture, everybody knows about it. Isn't that weird?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 6:27

Yeah.

Shannon Popkin: 6:28

So vulnerable. In our culture, nobody talks about their periods.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 6:33

Right.

Shannon Popkin: 6:34

I would not know if either of you were on your period like we never come up right.

Shannon Popkin: 6:38

Right, I mean maybe a really good friend you might when you're having a bad day with it right, and you're like, oh, yes, yeah, but in the Middle East it's the opposite, like we talk more openly about sex. They never talk about sex, but they talk very openly about periods, and especially in this culture, the Bible culture, it affected daily life, like you had to be withdrawn, and so everybody knew. So I read this story, though, about a man who brought his family over to the Middle East and they're walking in some crowded place and a young kid comes up to his teenage daughter trying to sell her tampons, which she was just horrified, right, yes, but in that culture like that's, you just talk real openly about that. So I think it's important that we know that going into this story Like this is not just some hidden thing that she could keep private. This is something everybody knew about her all the time, even though it wasn't visible. Any room she walked into, everybody was very aware of it.

Shannon Popkin: 7:42

So, before we get started and read the story, jesus gets to town. There's a huge crowd, they're happy to see him. Jairus immediately comes forward and says look, my daughter is about to die and can you please come? He begs Jesus, can you please come? And they're on the way there and there's this disruption that we're going to read about.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 8:01

Right. Well, what's interesting about that is she was known, but so was the person who. Jesus was actually on the way to right, because it was Jairus, whose daughter, who was 12, which is interesting, they're kind of set up as the polar opposites. You know, he was known, he was named. He would have had all this prestige, this one, when we never get her name. She was known, but only for her, what they would have thought of as failure, whereas he was known for all his accomplishment.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 8:27

And so Jesus is on the way, which for them and for a shame-based culture like theirs, would have made a whole lot of sense. That he was on the way to this important man, of course, but he had no sense that he stopped for some unnamed woman of all things who was unclean. So, like, the context is he's doing something that makes sense in terms of the world and going to a powerful man, and then we get this interruption, which he obviously didn't think of as an interruption, but they would have, you know they would have. And even you can tell when this happens, his disciples are frustrated with him, like you can see them. Like what are you talking about? Everybody's touching you like we're on our way here. Can we please just get ourselves together and do the thing you know? And he's like and he just stops and is like no, yeah, just stops for her.

Shannon Popkin: 9:11

So, yeah, there's a disruption, and I love that you pointed out those differences, because the first part made sense, the second part doesn't, and what ties them together? I think sometimes this is called a sandwich. So you have a story that has the part in the middle is surrounded by two, and the thing that kind of makes it a sandwich is the number 12. So this daughter is 12 years old and this woman we're going to find something about her that is 12. So that's how we know that the author is kind of sandwiching these two scenes. There's this disruption in the middle. So Hope, could you read for us this story.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 9:49

We're Luke, chapter 8, 42 through 48, and we're reading from the ESV, translation Perfect as Jesus went with him, the crowds pressed around him, including a woman who had suffered from bleeding for 12 years. She had spent all her money on physicians, but no one was able to heal her. She came up behind Jesus and touched the fringe of his cloak and immediately her bleeding stopped. Who touched me? Jesus asked, but they all denied it. Master said Peter, the people are crowding and pressing against you, but Jesus declared someone touched me, for I know that the power has gone out for me. Then the woman, seeing that she could not escape notice, came trembling and fell down before him In the presence of all the people. She explained why she had touched him and how she had immediately been healed. Daughter, jesus said your faith has healed you. Go in peace.

Shannon Popkin: 11:35

All right, thank you so much. So let's first talk about the state that this woman is in. What do we learn about her?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 11:44

Well, we learn that this is something that's been going on for her forever Right 12 years, which must have felt like forever. It's chronic, it's nonstop. It's something that she has spent all of her money on, pretty much. She's been going after healing for 12 years. It's not like, oh, this is happening and I'm not doing anything about it. She's really been then pursuing that, but this chronic struggle has probably made her feel very isolated.

Shannon Popkin: 12:09

Yeah, 12 years, all her money, no treatment. She's exhausted all of her resources, all of the options. She's gone to all the doctors and I don't know if you know anybody like that, but that is a really desperate place to be in In our world today. There are just people who have exhausted everything, they've gotten to the end of all of the options and still there is the problem. That's where she is.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 12:36

It's a place of despair.

Shannon Popkin: 12:38

Yeah, despair. And so she's gone through this for 12 years. She's in this place of despair, and what does she decide to do about it?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 12:47

So she goes after this man and, what's interesting, I love this picture they mentioned the fringe of his cloak, so he would have had a piece of fabric that would have draped over his shoulder. The fact that she had the boldness or the desperation, or whatever it is in that moment to just push through and just touch him, I'm like you're kind of like, root for her, you know, yeah, like that's right. I mean, what does she have to lose? Kind of right. It's like she probably was going to get in trouble. I mean she would have thought in her mind this is a rabbi and a man and I'm an unclean woman, this is not OK. That she's touching him. Yeah, she's like, hey, man, I'm going for it. What do I have to lose? I'm already isolated. You know, I got nothing.

Shannon Popkin: 13:28

Yes, that's so true, Because twice we've been told the crowd is crushing, like this is a. I mean we need to picture a crowd Like it says it's crushing him, and so for her to get to him, she's got to have some gumption, you know, some drive, some determination. I mean, this is a desperate woman and I think you're right. What does she have to lose? And do you think it's interesting that she comes from? It says behind you know? It says she came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 14:02

I think that's shame, right, you know? I think sometimes people who have chronic struggles, whatever they are, whether they're mental health or physical or whatever, it's something that they maybe want to hide or they feel shame about, or coming face to face with him and having to have a conversation about this might have felt like too much. But if I can just get in in the back, no one will know, touch it, you know what I mean. Like that feels, like I can do this without having to expose and be so vulnerable for this thing. That like I don't want and I've had forever.

Shannon Popkin: 14:31

Yeah, there's another passage where it says that they were trying to touch the fringe and there is a verse in Isaiah that talks about healing from the fringe of the garment and so logically, it probably made sense that that's what she would go for. I think most often we hear about people presenting before Jesus like they're at his feet you know he's sitting, and they're bringing their sickness or whatever it is. They're facing him, but she's I mean she's coming from behind and, like you said, I mean she. Let's just call attention to this whole clean, unclean thing Touching. I circled it a bunch of times in this passage One, two, three, four, five. I think there's a lot of mention on the word touch. When you're on your period, you're not allowed to touch anything. What's the deal with that?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 15:23

Yeah, well, that goes back to the Levitical law, right? That it all had to do with worship, your ability to approach the temple or to be a part of the meal or any of that on the Sabbath. That was the goal was to be able to get into the presence of God, and there are so many things that disqualify you from that. I mean all kinds of things if you read through Leviticus and that was just one of them.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 15:43

She had this space between her and God that she knew about anyway, and any sense she had of Jesus divinity would have given her a real clear sense of that space. And even if she wasn't unclean, women weren't gonna go up and touch men. I mean, that was not a thing, unless it was her husband or her children.

Shannon Popkin: 16:02

What do you mean by this space between them?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 16:04

In their culture not unlike our culture they would have had a very clear sense of the otherness of God and all the things you had to do to get to him. So if she had any sense of Jesus divinity, that space would have been in her mind, of the fact that she is other, he is other, she doesn't have access, you know. And so, again, her boldness in touching him is beyond what we would consider.

Shannon Popkin: 16:27

Yeah, it's astonishing, jairus, that's not as surprising. That's like you noticed that contrast. He's coming to face the rabbi and say will you come begging him, like he wants him to come. But this woman, if they found out that she's among them, you know that kind of touching you're in a crowd you can't avoid. She's responsible though to avoid. That's right. That's the law, the Levitical law. It's not about hygiene, it's like ritual. It's not like touching, like they didn't understand even about germs. So it's not really about that. It's like a moral thing, you know. It's like clean and unclean, and you have to go through these rituals to go from unclean to clean. And I mean, if you read through those laws, I would not have loved being a woman. Oh, my goodness, you know, cause, like you can't touch other people, you can't. If you touch the furniture, the furniture becomes unclean. So I don't know, you can't sit on the same couch as someone else, or you can't share food, like the meals, You're excluded from all the gatherings.

Shannon Popkin: 17:30

You know she couldn't go to the temple and this has been going on for 12 years Right. Well, I mean, you're a therapist. What does that mean for her as a you know, just never experiencing touch and experiencing this exclusion? What would this have been for her?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 17:44

Yeah, psychologically really damaging, you know. I mean you know Chris said the word despair. I mean this would have made her so isolated, so lonely and just alone in her own struggle and her own thoughts. I mean people that have chronic things like this, that have been kind of isolated from everybody, that the wear and tear on them emotionally and spiritually, you know, kind of what I see in my office is they start to think all these horrible thoughts about themselves and then also they start to have this fracture between them and God because they're so confused. Why hasn't he healed me, or is he gonna heal me, or does he love me? And so it just messes with every layer of the human psyche and soul to have something so chronic, that is so isolating. I think most chronic things are. But in particular, for all the reasons that you and Chris stated, she is so isolated culturally in a way that she wouldn't even be today, right, but it's, you know, I just get this visual of her alone in a house and there's just no one.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 18:44

And just being alone in her mind for those 12 years and then going to people and trying to pursue help. I have a lot of clients that struggle with that, where they're like, well, maybe this will be the thing, well, maybe this will be the thing, and then it ends up not being the thing. So she's got all of that stacked against her emotionally, of there may never be a thing, and I have spent all my money and now what you know, and so I think it's that level of despair that made her be like I have to get to him.

Shannon Popkin: 19:12

Absolutely yeah. I mean we saw that in COVID, like what isolation did to people and also the whole touching thing during COVID.

Shannon Popkin: 19:21

Yeah, you're right Like we need touch, right, and yeah, we need that. We crave that like just not being able to be with our loved ones hold, you know our grand babies are. It's a horrible thing to not be able to touch. It's interesting to me that God's created us as touching beings, like those who need touch, and yet these were part of his laws. And I think what's interesting to her, what's surprising, is she is willing, like I completely agree with you, christine, that she feels that distance between her and this rabbi. Like she knows she is not welcome in this crowd. She knows she's particularly not welcome with this man, but she risks making everybody unclean, that's right. And can you imagine, like, let's talk COVID here. Like you know, you have COVID and you risk contaminating everybody. Yes, and they're all gonna have to be in isolation because they've been with you, but she's willing to push through that crowd and reach out and even risk contaminating the rabbi you know whoa.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 20:22

Ooh, I hadn't thought about that.

Shannon Popkin: 20:23

Yeah.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 20:24

Yikes, but that's how much pain she's in. Yeah, it makes you think too. Is this the only story you know? Like I wonder, when we get to the new earth and we meet her, will it be like, yeah, there were three teachers who came through town before him and everyone I tried for I mean I'd be trying forever, I would try anything. You know what I mean. And you just wonder like how many times that she'd been disappointed because somebody came through and they weren't Jesus so they couldn't help her. Yeah, I don't know that she even expected him to do anything. But when you're in that place of desperation, you'll try anything.

Shannon Popkin: 20:57

Yeah, and so then what? Was the result of her touching him.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 21:01

If we talk about the protracted time of her disease, that it's instantaneous. Yes, I always think how did that feel exactly? She knew, something physically happened that she knew. And to think, what did that feel like? Not just physically, but then what happened in her soul when she suddenly knew? I mean, did she start crying for joy, like could she not breathe for a second? I mean, you just think this burden is suddenly gone. What does that do to your brain?

Shannon Popkin: 21:32

I don't know.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 21:33

Right.

Shannon Popkin: 21:34

Yeah, it's like 12 years. And then it says immediately One touch and immediately. That's amazing. I'll bet she did have all the emotions.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 21:45

Yeah, and probably like that Is this real, is this real, is this real? Yeah, right, but then she probably hears him go who touched me? Who touched me? And there's probably something about her hearing him that was like oh my gosh, it is real. It was real. This is what I feel physically is actually true, and he sensed it too.

Shannon Popkin: 22:01

Yeah, on the one hand, what a horrible thing to experience immediate healing and have nobody to share that with Right, because you just, you like, snuck in and you want to be like, oh my, because with the other miracles we get to see that, like the guy who got up off of his mat and walked, or the one who was blind and saw it, like the crowd gets to experience that. But this miracle is different because this woman has kind of stolen the miracle.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 22:26

Right, right. And she also says in verse 47, it says, seeing that she could not escape, notice which tells you she was trying, Like in my head I see her sort of like backing out, trying to quietly just sneak away. Maybe nobody noticed. Yes, Right, she couldn't get away. She was trying and I would imagine she thinks I'm gonna get in trouble Cause even though she was healed, all those things are still true he's still a rabbi, she was still unclean, she was waiting for the hammer to come down.

Shannon Popkin: 22:54

I think Well, and how this would play out with the crowd, because they suddenly would be like what? You were unclean and you were among us. Like she could really get it. I don't know if she'd get stoned for that, but definitely they're gonna be displeased with her In this culture, like you just have to imagine all of the effort and the thinking and the energy that goes around clean, unclean, clean, unclean. You know you don't ever wanna be contaminated, cause you have to go through these rituals. It's expensive, it costs you time, everything is set up so there's like a contaminant With Jesus. The contaminated one touches him and they're uncontaminated and I don't wanna use it as contaminant. I should use clean and unclean. But the unclean touch him suddenly they're healed, they're clean. She can touch everybody. Like that's amazing, right.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 23:45

Yes, yeah, and just speaks to for them. They would have had in there at least some of them would have had a clear vision of what you were talking about, the effort, and they would have never thought that the movement would go that way, Cause all they knew was that the movement went the other way. You always had to do something to make up for it. So the fact that this man was different than anything they had known about making your way to God, who was a totally different movement, had to just be, I would think, just confusing, or like wait a minute what?

Shannon Popkin: 24:16

Right, yes, well, and I mean, if we look at the overarching story of the Bible, all sin entered through Adam. It's like from one man. All of us, we received that sin nature, but Jesus is the one who reverses all of that. In one man All of us can be made clean from our sin, like that's astonishing. Play out the story a second with me. If Jesus had not said who was it that touched me, what would that mean for this woman?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 24:44

Well, partially it would have meant she wasn't restored necessarily to community, cause what he does next, he doesn't just heal her physically but he heals her socially, because part of what they had to do is go to the priest, show themselves the priest like, declare it publicly and then she could be back in her community. So he does all that for her. When he calls her out, all of them here, like, oh, she's clean now, right, so she may have not. I don't know if she had pain that went with this, but that would have finished. But her life maybe wouldn't have changed significantly.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 25:18

And I think that goes back to that psychological thing. She would have a hard time convincing other people. And then what would that be like? To wade through that and try to talk people in it? No, no, really, this has been healed, or this was this, or you know. And for her even to know how to make sense of that for herself. You know when things do finally turn and get healing. You know, often some of my clients have a hard time knowing how to walk in that or turn into that right.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 25:41

And so if he hadn't acknowledged it. I think that would have made that harder for her to step into.

Shannon Popkin: 25:47

Yeah, we noticed that she wanted to be hidden. She wanted to come up from behind, she wanted to snatch the ceiling and she wanted to be dissolved into the crowd. But Jesus isn't okay with hidden miracles, like that's not the purpose. You know, he's not okay with us just taking from him. He wants us to interact with him, like that's the whole purpose of the miracles is that we would know him. He's calling her out, he's. I mean, this is really uncomfortable for her. I'm gonna read this verse who was it that touched me? When all denied it? Peter said master, the crowd surround you and are pressing in on you. It's like everybody's touching you. Why are you doing this? We gotta hurry. This 12 year old is dying. We gotta go. And then when the woman saw she was not hidden, she came forward. But I love the part where all denied it.

Shannon Popkin: 26:32

I was thinking how did that go Like? Did Jesus say who touched me? And then was it you. Was it you?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 26:38

It wasn't me.

Shannon Popkin: 26:40

And I mean, I don't know how much time went by, but this was a passage of time where this woman has to make the decision. Why do you think that's surprising that Jesus presses her?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 26:49

I think it's the very reason that Chris said that he is trying to restore her to community. He's trying to restore her in a different way Because the story right after this, when they do go to the house of Jarrus, Jesus only bites a couple of people in and he says don't tell anybody.

Shannon Popkin: 27:02

Yeah, Like the opposite of this, yeah.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 27:05

And so there's something here about he is trying to make a point. I think he's also trying to make a point about her faith. He calls her daughter then, instead of the nameless woman, and then he says your faith has healed you. So I think there's something about it that he is trying to do something that's bigger than just healing her of this physical chronic thing. Well, and he also you think about what he says.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 27:56

When he calls her daughter, he's dignifying her, because it would have been this immense loss of dignity You're talking about. She's coming from the back. He makes her look at him face to face and says daughter. He's looking at her face to face, which, for this woman who, like you know, has been avoiding, has been isolated all these things, that's part of what Jesus does with all of us is he looks in our face, dignifies us, calls us by who we really are, which who knows what kind of lies she had in her head because of what she's been living with, and he's not gonna leave that. That again, there's more healing than just physical that's going on here.

Shannon Popkin: 28:32

Oh, that's so good and, yeah, daughter, your faith. Like he's looking into her eyes, he's speaking to her, yet the crowd is still there. This is a public matter. He is dignifying her, he's healing her inside and also where she stands, and I love too that she he gives her an opportunity to tell her story because she's been hidden away. Like these are all the people who probably go to the same synagogue every week and they see each other. They know each other's stories. They don't know her story, but it says that, falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people right, letting us know this crowd is here, letting them know why she touched him and how she had been immediately healed.

Shannon Popkin: 29:15

So, like the why, like it's been 12 years y'all you don't you forgot about me. I'm the daughter of so-and-so. It's been 12 years I've been in isolation. This is why. This is why I risk contaminating all of you. This is why I came forward and how, like this is what happened. Like she did get to tell her story. Cause I just think that would have been so sad to have this immediate healing and have nobody to share it with.

Shannon Popkin: 29:38

So she got to you know she got to tell her story and it got to be this public thing. But what about the faith? There's something intriguing about that. Daughter, your faith has made you well, like he could have said daughter, you are well. You know, daughter, you are healed, go in peace. Why talk about her faith there?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 29:55

You know, often I think we think of someone who's filled with faith. You know that they're so, you know they have the strong belief and they're so just robust in their faith. But this is like a desperate faith, you know. This is like a desperate, weak, needy person, and so it's not like I'm coming so emboldened and empowered and on fire for the Lord. I'm coming out of total desperation. Her faith is a desperate faith. It's different than I think what we like to praise in the church or praise as like really bold, great faith. This is like this needy, desperate faith and that drove her to Jesus, that God her there.

Shannon Popkin: 30:34

Oh, that's so good. In the Hebrew mind, faith was never just something you did with your head. You did it with your hands, with your feet. Whatever she did this, she did this thing of faith with her hand, and yet she didn't do it with any sense of her own strength. Yeah, I'm this big, bold faith girl. It was exactly the opposite. She was in a place of desperation. She had exhausted every other option, every other resource, and so she's reaching out. He is the only one. And I think there is a component of that in faith, like it's only faith when you get to the point where you realize it's only faith. So, for salvation, if we think we can save ourselves and yet we're still reaching out to Jesus, like, yeah, and I need you too, that's not truly saving faith.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 31:20

Right? Well, it's the upside down kingdom, right, it's what you said. It's the reversal. That happens is it's everything opposite of what the world tells us. Do your best and you be you. Jesus praises weakness over and over. Yeah, the goal is not that we become strong, but he's already strong. The goal is we learn to rely on his strength. And so talk about faith, of a mustard seed. You know, is this one act? And he praises her for it. When one sinner repents, the angels in heaven rejoice. Well, that's one act of faith. That's how he responds to any movement of faith. Is this praise which we don't deserve? But it makes him happy, you know? Yeah.

Shannon Popkin: 32:01

But again, that faith is in desperation. It's not in strength, it's in weakness. I love that, it's so good. So what are the false narratives that the story corrects in our thinking, in our world?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 32:12

I mean definitely the God's forgotten about me. I mean I would have thought God's forgotten about. It's been 12 years. This is a terrible life. I may live this way forever and that God's timing is really hard sometimes.

Shannon Popkin: 32:24

How long he wants to sit and think and you can imagine like his back is to her. You know when she reaches, he's not coming to seek her out, right? It does feel, maybe, like she's just the forgotten one in this whole town. And yet I think when he turns and says who touched me? Like the power went out, this is evidence. No, he hasn't forgotten you. He doesn't want this to just be an anonymous miracle. He wants to talk to you.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 32:56

Right, I love that. That's so good. So often we think we need to move toward Jesus. Cleaned up as opposed to moving toward Jesus is what cleans us up. You know just kind of that different idea.

Shannon Popkin: 33:09

Oh, that's so good. I've heard so many people say well, even my grandfather said I could never become a Christian because I'm afraid I'm going to be a hypocrite, I'm afraid I'm going to sin after I, and it's like no, it's the whole point.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 33:24

All right, you will, you are.

Shannon Popkin: 33:27

You will and you are like the church is not the place where all the clean people go. The church is the place where all the people who know they can't be clean go, you know, because it's the only place where we can get that healing that we need. We're all like this woman. We are all in a desperate situation that's lasted more than 12 years. You know, if you've lived more than 12 years like it is, it's a problem. Our sin is a problem that we cannot fix. We all have to reach out to the only one who can make us clean, like he is the only way to reverse all of the isolation of our sin. And it's not I mean, it's not like we're not talking about isolation from each other, but isolation from God. Our sin keeps us from being able to reach out to him, and I think also you know the false narrative that God expects me to clean myself up like that. It's kind of what you're saying, but just a little tweak.

Shannon Popkin: 34:16

You know, like that he's looking at me saying, well, once you get it all cleaned up.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 34:21

That's right, then you'll be mine.

Shannon Popkin: 34:23

Yeah, and none of us can. You know she couldn't. She spent all of her money, she did everything she could and she couldn't clean herself up, that's right. Yeah. So then how do we live? Like the story is true.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 34:35

You know, when you're in this chronic thing that you've been praying for and praying for, and praying for and you and there hasn't been movement in the way that you would hope. It's real easy to believe that God doesn't love you and he doesn't care. You know, kind of like Chris was saying, and I think it's the way you live, like this is true is you start with that? I heard a Jack Miller say that once you start with the fact that God loved you and then you work out to your circumstances, you don't start with your circumstances to tell you whether he does or doesn't.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 34:59

And so, then, that when you start with he loves you, then you pray, even for 12 years, that he will do something as opposed to well, he doesn't love me, so I'm not going to ask him anymore. Living like it's true is telling yourself the truth that he does love you, even if nothing is shifted. And that's very hard to do. You have to have community, the Holy Spirit. All that has to work. It's not like, oh, I can just tell myself this.

Shannon Popkin: 35:22

I love that, like this working assumption that, even though it feels like his back is to me, it's literally not right.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 35:29

You know, we I have to have that conversation a lot with clients in our office because every shred of evidence in their life would say it it is. So you have to really go back to what God has said about himself.

Shannon Popkin: 35:39

Right and faith is not based on what we can see and evidence in front of us. Like she didn't have any evidence and yet she reached out. She pressed through that crowd. She reached out in faith and it was warmly welcomed. You know she was called daughter and yeah. So just that working assumption. God loves you, he wants to hear from you, he wants you to come to him in your desperation, over and over and over. There's no formula for healing in this life. We live in a broken world that we don't know how the story is going to turn out. But you know we're this isn't the whole story, right? You know? You mentioned before Christina new earth, like that. That's the full story, that's right, and that's where all the healing and all the restoration will take place. So that's got to be part of our working assumption too. God loves us enough to recreate this whole world and allow us to be part of it.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 36:35

You know, so you know all through the gospels, the narratives, the miracles or derv's, their foretaste, their pictures of what's coming, of the already not yet Right.

Shannon Popkin: 36:45

Yeah, that's so good.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 36:46

I think it makes us ask different questions. If we can satisfy the question of does he love me and actually believe that he does, well, then that's a paradigm shift. And then you start asking different questions. Well, who is this God? Well, what is his goal for me? If it's not for everything to just be easy, it shifts your prayers to like bear fruit from this suffering. Because if I really believe you love me which is hard to believe, but like it's this shift in thinking about who he is and what he wants for you, he's a God who loves me, is powerful and allows suffering, then what does that mean about his character? Well, it doesn't mean that it's not health and wealth, it's not the American dream. It makes you ask different questions and know him in a way that you're not gonna know until you get to that place.

Shannon Popkin: 37:31

Yeah, living like it's true, I think, is holding on to what God says is true about himself, that he does love me, that he has a purpose, that he has a fulfillment of all these promises. But it's also knowing that he expects me to have faith right, that in the moments in the hard times he's asking that of me. So living like it's true is like, okay, I've gotta cooperate with this God who wants me to walk by faith. Thank you so much, you guys. This was amazing conversation.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 38:04

You're so welcome.

Shannon Popkin: 38:07

So, christine, tell us about At His Feet studies, what makes these unique? How did you and Hope start writing these?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 38:16

Right, this is a story of when God does things the way he wants and you don't plan for them. It was never our intention to do this sort of publish anything not at all. So Hope was already at a little church, a lovely church in Nebraska that and my husband and I moved there for him to pastor this church. This was like years ago and she was looking for studies for the women there and she was having a hard time finding something that had some good meat in it and really got into the tux but didn't have hours and hours of homework because we had a lot of young moms with little kids the era where you don't sleep and you have all these or working moms, working women. And so she said I'm just, can you just maybe write something? You went to seminary, right, how hard could it be? And then she said to me let's start with Romans, oh, which, like you know, let's start with the e-book right.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 39:08

So that's how it started and it was really just I would sit with six or seven commentators that I trusted, who I would call my old seminary professor and be like, hey, who should I be reading? And then I would think through and condense, read the text and meditate, and then I would hand it to her and she would write reflection questions because she's a therapist which would make us think through, kind of like, okay, how does this make me deal with my own heart and what might the spirit want to do through this text today? And so we would just run copies for the 15 women who met in the little portable behind the church. That was our whole goal. We did that for Romans and then, a couple of years later, we did it for Samuel, because I told her I'll only do it if it's Old Testament narrative, because that's my favorite. And then you know, through the years we saw this niche and that women really wanted the meat and they wanted to read. But you know they didn't have time to do an hour of homework every day or whatever it was, and so it just kept growing. We moved to different cities, we ended up having a pastor friend who started publishing for us, and as they got in people's hands they passed them around.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 40:10

And here we are, nine years later. We've written 10 books, and it's such a privilege. And I think the way that they're different is they're very simple. All of our books are the same. It's like four observation questions that just get you into the text and make sure you're reading. We always have to start there and then I write a commentary which is similar to what you would find in any commentary, where it's, you know, versus 19 to 23. And then we talk about them and sometimes I talk about the Greek if it's helpful, and sometimes I don't, or they Hebrew it. Then the next verses, and then we go through the whole passage, verse by verse, and then Hope writes these five or six reflection questions that make you deal with your heart and what might the spirit be wanting to do. And that's it. Every time is the same. So it just means they're pretty accessible. They don't take a lot of prep time. You can add more if you want to. We had groups where they're, you know, like nursing moms, where they have.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 41:02

I call it the dark time, where you just there's no sleep happening and you're not really sure where your brain is anymore. We've had groups that have told us they just show up and literally read through the passage and read through the commentary. They don't have any space to do anything else and they just show up and do it, which is makes me happy Because I think, yes, like we want access to scripture and meditating on God's word, no matter where you are. That is our whole goal to help women get in the Lord. Yeah.

Shannon Popkin: 41:31

That's a similar goal for this podcast, like just knowing the story, sharing the story with others, living the story. Anyway, we can access the Bible and be thinking about it and try it, and well, I love that. And where can leaders or individuals find your studies? Sure?

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 41:47

If our website is athisfeetsuddiescom, just athisfeetsstudiescom, and then we're also on Instagram at his feet studies, and on our website are sample studies you can download to just sort of look at one and be like would this fit for the women that I'm around, would it not? There's a couple free giveaways on our website all kinds of stuff there.

Shannon Popkin: 42:08

Very cool. And you do have one on the book of Luke, which the story is part of. So that's we do.

Hope Blanton & Christine Gordon: 42:13

That's right. We have 10 weeks. We go through the whole gospel of Luke Yep. I love it.