Reach Again: Mark 5 - Samantha Johnson

In this week’s message, Sam Johnson walks through Mark 5 and the intertwined stories of Jairus and the woman who had been suffering for twelve years. As both come to Jesus carrying impossible circumstances, we’re reminded that faith isn’t the absence of doubt or pain, it’s the courage to keep reaching for Christ even when our prayers feel unanswered. Through seasons of waiting, hidden grief, and unmet expectations, God invites us to bring our whole hearts before Him, trusting that His presence is the greatest miracle of all. When hope feels distant and the future uncertain, Jesus meets us with compassion, reminding us that even in the waiting, He is still worthy of our trust.

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Transcript

Samantha Johnson 0:03

Good evening. We good? You can hear me? Sweet. It is such an honor to be with you in this space. Like Jaden said, my name is Sam, Sammy J., Swans Johnson. I have a lot of different names around here. And it is such an honor to be with you. Just thinking back just about three years ago when I first was an intern here, was the first time that I preached in a space like this. And so what a joy that now, three years later, I'm in seminary and on a wild adventure that the Lord is leading and just trying to take the next faithful step. But we are so excited that you are here with us tonight. If you were not here with us in June for our last large group gathering, I'd love to recap the beautiful message that Dreden preached for us. We were in the story of the paralyzed man whose friends had lowered him through the roof, so desperate to see Jesus and to find healing. And we looked at this question of who is Jesus? And as she ended the night, she really asked the question: who is Jesus for you? As we saw different characters and people throughout scripture coming to Christ with different assumptions of who he was, Jaden landed us on the truth that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And the greatest gift and healing of all was that he restored us to the Father and we are reconciled and able to be in relationship with the God of the universe. I think her sermon can be beautifully summed up in an Augustine quote. Augustine was a fifth century very old guy, but very prominent leader, who still affects us in the church today. He says in his book, Confessions, our heart, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. We ended the night talking about our greatest need can only be met and found in Christ. And then she ended by also leading up to tonight saying, and the God of the universe who wants a relationship with you also cares about the needs, the brokenness, and the pain that you experience. And so that's what we're jumping into tonight. I have a story a few weeks ago. I was at Tudor Joe's with Jaden, and we were just doing a quick few errands, and I had one contingency for her. If we go to Trader Joe's, we will not go to a mill cashier because they will flirt and I never know what to do. And so we're shopping around, and the hardest decision of my time was do I want yellow curry or orange curry? And I'm sitting there deciding, I'm like, ha, yellow, cool, there we go. I had a lady even be like, that's great, cool, I'm feeling affirmed. We get ready, right? We're taking the cart. She has her order. I have my order. We're taking it up. I have the female cashier. I see, hello, here we go. And I get up there and we're waiting, we're chatting patiently, and it's busy. And so they bring up more cashiers. And the next thing I know, we're getting a wave down by a man to come up and be in his line. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. And Jaden's like, well, this will be good, probably. And so I walk up and you know, we're doing our thing. I'm sitting there with my debit card ready to check out. He's scanning the curry and he goes, Oh, I like the yellow. And I'm like, you weren't supposed to talk. And so then I start getting flustered and I'm like, yeah, I really love the yellow. Like I was deciding between the yellow and the orange, but like I didn't know, and I've had the yellow before. So and literally this man looks at me, dumbfounded, going, What? And I was like, the curry. And he was like, I wasn't talking about the curry. And then it hits me a flashback that earlier in the day I was painting and clumsily got yellow paint on my shirt. So I'm looking down, a little offended, like, oh, he's calling out the yellow paint on my shirt. And I think he sees me again frantically, and he just yells, Your nails, your yellow nails. And I was like, Oh, yeah, they're trendy. Like if you're and Jane is probably just like, what is going on? And I wish I could have told told you that I was able to leave instantaneously with my head hung low, but instead I just sit there and watch Jaden check out and then just continuously be like, why did I say that? Why do I exist right now? And so catch me never going to that Trader Joe's ever again. But maybe, even though this is a very silly example, maybe you can relate to making a plan, simple or big for your life, and you're expecting it to go one way. You walk into Trader Joe's thinking, I'm gonna get out of here unnoticed, and something messes up your plans, puts a wrench in it, and then now you thought you were going north, and all of a sudden you're going east. And tonight that is the very thing I want us to focus on in land in. I want us to talk about the desires, the dreams of our heart that feel unseen by the Lord when we think we're going one way and all of a sudden we can't help but keep going the other way and we can't figure out how to get back. And so before we dive into the scripture, would you bow your heads and pray with me? Lord, thank you for the gift it is that we get to encounter you in your word. And that though you are the creator of the universe, you know the number of hairs on our heads, and you want to know the joys and the sorrows of our heart. Lord, would you make yourself known tonight? Would we draw closer to you tonight as you draw closer to us? We love you and it's in your sound, and we pray. Amen. We start in Mark 5, as we are going to be looking at the intertwining of two different stories that go through part of a chapter in the Gospel of Mark. It reads this you can look at the Sky Bible or on your phone, or if you have a paper Bible, shout out to you. Mark 522. Then one of the synagogue leaders named Jairus came and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live. So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. This is a very promiscuous verse. There is a religious leader, someone well known amongst society, whose family name would be known. Maybe he doesn't know these people, but they definitely know who he is. He is in charge of teaching and helping make sure that temple things are running well. And he is seen sprinting up to Jesus in a panic. Come help my daughter. She is dying. This man, all dignity, all pride that he might have being a leader in society, it has all gone out the window, and he is desperate for this man who he is maybe still figuring out who he is. Hey, if you are a teacher who can do something, do something. And so this man is in a frenzy, and everyone around him, all of the public society, large crowd pushing and shoving, is seeing this incident. Jesus agrees to go with him, and we see very quickly that this is a matter of time, that she is running out, every single clock ticking is making it worse for her, and she could possibly die. But then we move on to verse 25, and it's our second story coming into this. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. It also can be easy to dismiss this verse. Though one verse, there's a lot that we can unpack in this. According to religious laws, you just saw someone who is a leader amongst the community, but then now you see a bleeding woman who, because again, of these religious laws, is considered unclean. And so therefore she cannot enter the temple courts, she is dismissed by society, she is a reject, she is isolated, you don't want to look at her, you don't want to come near her. Because if you were to come near her and touch her accidentally, now you are unclean. And now you are considered uh to the side of society, and you have to go through ritual purification. And so this woman is carrying a lot and alone in it. Maybe you can instantly think of yourself in this woman and see, I too have been bleeding for 12 years. There is something that I have been in pain for for longer than I can ever even explain. Or maybe this is your first time recognizing, oh yeah, there's something in me that has been hurting for some time. And I must recognize, sometimes wounds are self-inflicted. Sometimes we had a relationship go sour because we said something. Sometimes we had this big plan and expectation for God, but we put them in a box and we get hurt when things don't go according to our plan. But sometimes you get hurt unexpectedly by a friend, by a family member, and it was nothing of your choosing, and you are left without reconciliation, without a I'm sorry, and you're left wondering, what do I do? Sometimes there are desires that you feel the Lord has planted in your heart that you have tried to pray away, and they stubbornly hold on, and you don't know what to do with them because it feels unseen. If we are honest, if I am honest, there are areas, issues, circumstances, hopes, dreams, pains that feel unseen and untouched by the Lord. This might look a lot of different ways for us. Maybe it's a friendship, maybe it's longing for marriage, for children, for a secure job, for the Lord to give you some sort of direction on a major or what to do next, for community, for reconciliation, for healing and freedom from anxiety, addiction, depression, for healing from illness, or just a clear diagnosis of what might be next. We're just an open door of some sorts from the Lord. And I believe this waiting and wondering and questioning leads us to a lot of hidden grief. There are prayers that you have prayed that no one knows about. There are tears you have wept that no one has seen. And tonight we're gonna unpack that a little bit more as we see this woman not by her own doing in desperate need of healing, and Jairus' daughter in desperate need of healing, and again not by her own doing. And so we read on and pick up in verse 26. This woman, 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. I don't need to explain to you. I'm sure you can imagine how gruesome and painful first century medicine would have been. The point is this, though. She was searching for an answer. She was trying to make sense of her pain. She was trying to figure out if there was something she could do differently for things to be different. And yet it all came back void and only more painful. Maybe you've been there before. Maybe you are there. And I want to make a distinction before we move on further. There are kind of two things I see here in this conversation about desires and dreams and hopes with the Lord. There's side A to this coin, where maybe there are desires and dreams that you have placed above Christ. And tonight is the night, maybe that there's going to be breakthrough, and the Lord has been poking so gently, whispering to you, hey, let's work this out. I want to have a heart check with you. And the Lord in his kindness leads us to repentance and lovingly reveals the times when we have wanted the gift more than the giver. And sometimes the Lord does have to do the hard pruning work of reordering our loves. Again, tonight is an opportunity for you to wrestle. But then there's this side be. And maybe you've done the work of wrestling, and Lord, search my heart and know me. And you've gotten to this place where you can say, I genuinely really think and believe that the Lord has pruned me. And of course, there's always this continual process of sanctification and becoming more like Christ. And I might stumble, but really, Lord, if the only thing I have is you and not fill in the blank, I am satisfied. And yet it still hurts. And just like this woman, it comes back void and still painful. This woman, mocked by society, isolated, alone, damaged, physically, emotionally, spiritually, has found herself at rock bottom. We read on in verse 27. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak because she thought, if I could just touch his clothes, I will be healed. This is one of those moments I imagine her being like, what else do I have to lose? If it's me on the ground reaching my hand, if there are people around me who could stomp on me, I don't care. None of you even bother to recognize me. There is nothing left. There is no one left. What do I have to lose? You ever had one of those moments where it's just a full send? Well, I must tell you, as I started my first year of my master's at a brand new school, I started at an undergrad that was a very small school. And so sports were like, we might win a game here or there, but it wasn't really, you know, a big crowd showing up. But because I went to a really large school that was in March Madness and all the fun things, of course, I now have become a fan for life. Everything I have is loop. I've got the shoes, I'm ready at those games to lose my voice. And we made it in March Madness to the quarterfinals. You may have seen Duke versus Yukon. It was the tragedy of my life. Um, we have a clip before we do, know this. We are winning, right? We are so ahead, but then we start getting a little in over our heads. Maybe we witnessed that tonight. Tier. And we all of a sudden have the other team catching up to us, and we're like, wait, we had a really big lead, and now we're like almost tied. Well, there are a few seconds left, and you will see what happens with Yukon, and therefore what happens with Duke. Here we go. And just like that, our entire campus was depressed. Um I mean, you just witnessed it, point four seconds, right? And this dude just has to chuck it with everything he's got. And that UConn player, man, that must be the joy of his life. He just punched that thing out in game. Just like that, me walking in, being like, Duke's gonna win it all. Everyone at the watching spot, I was at silent. But maybe you've had those moments again, where it's just been a full scent. What else do I have to lose? It reminds me of this great famous theologian, Michael Scott. My uh one of my favorite moments, right? It's like if I were to, I don't even know, go up there and then be like, John 4, Samantha Johnson in parentheses. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Michael Scott taking credit too. Um I just love these moments. And though these are funny and these are clips, we very clearly can see there are moments in our life, big and small, where it's just uh you lose 100% of the shots you don't take. And I can picture this woman after so many attempts and getting stepped on and ignored and all these things, being like, okay, one more. What if I just give this one more thing a try? What else do I have to lose? I have been entirely ignored by my community, most likely spat on if people were walking by her. She is in social ruin, economic ruin, there is no chance for marriage, no community, no normal religious participation, and yet she reaches for Jesus. The woman that we would see walk into a room, reach for Christ. We would probably be the people scoffing at her, pointing at her, laughing at her for trying to touch Jesus. We read on after she touches his garment, it says, verse 29, immediately her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, Who touched my clothes? You see the people crowding against you, his disciples answered, and yet you can ask, Who touched me? But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be free from your suffering. I love how quiet and gentle this is. With a lot going on around her, she has a mustard seed of faith, maybe a 0.001% that she's got left. And she chooses to reach for Christ with all that she's got. It's not loud, it's not flashy, it's her private posture, hoping that something desperate inside of her might find healing. This is courageous vulnerability, and it is a bold, desperate reach for Christ. I've thought about this a lot, and there's something that happens in desperation. Maybe you've been there, where it really shows what your faith is founded on, what the foundation, what the cracks are. It comes out really quickly, and all of a sudden your belief system and your theology comes out pretty quickly on who God is and who God says you are. This woman who is bleeding did not have certainty like some of us might base our beliefs on, but she had a stubborn hope. May this woman be a witness for us tonight to the truth that Jesus is not asking you for your certainty. He's asking if he will reach again. But the opposite of your faith is not doubt. It is when we give up on reaching. It reminds me of this quote. I have it up here. Later on, you can come grab one. It's something I've kept as a wallpaper for years now. And every time I'm working on a sermon or an essay for school or whatever, it pops up every now and then, and it's a good reminder. Morgan Harper Nichols is a poet and she writes a prayer. It says, Let every unmet desire be met with the desire to lean on the Lord more than ever before, knowing that he is leading your heart right where it needs to be. Like this woman, our reaching is not easy. It requires great courage. But a courage that I firsthand know the grace of God meets us in. And though this woman had every reason to decide he's gonna be like the rest, he will not stop for me, he's gonna squeal if I reach him, and he's gonna say that I'm unclean, he's gonna push me aside, she reaches anyways. The story continues on with Jairus watching all this happen, still awaiting his miracle. Verse 35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. Your daughter is dead. They said, Why bother the teacher anymore? While Jesus is having an encounter, he is awaiting. Can you imagine what this felt like? Every second, again, that is ticking. You are watching your daughter's health drop. Every single second he spends with someone else, it probably feels like I am missing my opportunity. She is missing her opportunity. And then the news comes she has died. And his friends, his family, the people of his house come over to him. And what shocks me the most in this section of verses is that they tell him, Why bother the teacher anymore? The people who once saw Jairus desperately chase down Jesus are telling him to give up the chase. It's over. She's gone. It's too late. Maybe the comments of why bother the teacher anymore have come from others. In other words, why are you keep trying? Give it up. Stop praying. Stop holding on. Let's be realistic. There's no point. How are you still hoping? But if we're honest, the comments might majority of the time come from within. Why keep praying? Why keep hoping? Why keep bringing this to Jesus when it has not changed yet? I was talking with a friend this past week about this idea of desires and dreams and feelings. Unseen by the Lord, and these glimpses of hope that come in sometimes. And she said the best way to describe this is whiplash. And I found it to be so true. Maybe you felt this before. You've tried to remain in a middle ground. You've tried to keep your head down and just keep going about your business, but then a little bit of light comes in. So then you follow it, and it seems like, oh wow, it's finally my turn. And then the rug gets pulled out from under you, and you're swung to the other side with disappointment. And then you come back down and you're like, okay, that one hurt. I'm gonna keep going though. And then another light shines in, and you're like, oh my goodness, okay, that last one, yay, I know. Like that wasn't for me, but this one is. And then again, it happens, and you're left in disappointment. And again and again and again it happens, and it just feels like a whiplash, and it makes you cry out, of Lord, why would you let this ever happen to me? This happened to me a few years ago, and quite frankly, I was left at rock bottom from this whiplash. I was in a work situation where I was continually given hope, only to be matched with disappointment. I was promised a you know leadership opportunity, and I was so excited about it, and I was ready to take it, and I was ready whenever they would call me up, and then randomly without an answer, just gone. And so then I just I kept going, right? I love these people. These people loved me, I trusted them. And then I would be pulled into another room for another conversation. Hey, we have this great opportunity for you, right? I would get excited. Oh, it's not gonna be like the last time. And then again, random phone call, 30 seconds. Hey, things have changed. Glad you're you're cool with it. Thanks for being graceful with us. And it was just this whiplash back and forth of Lord, do you see my unfulfilled dreams and desires? Do you see the ways that I'm given hope only to be let down? If I'm honest, this left me at a tipping point to where it was easier to numb out the pain than acknowledge how suffocating it felt. It felt easier to assume no than dare to hope again just to be whiplashed and hurt again. So I figured numbing it out was the better option. And numbness, I must say, it might feel temporarily easier. But I can promise you, if you can imagine yourself like a little kid at the pool or the beach, you have a beach ball and you're sitting on it in the pool, right? Trying to like balance your stomach on it, and then it just shoots out of nowhere. I can promise you that when you try and numb down your pain and emotion and just push it off to the side, I'll deal with that later. I'll push it in the junk drawer, in the closet, it will creep out, it will jump out when you least expect it. Firsthand testimony, it hurts you and those around you, and now there is more reparation to be done because blood has gone everywhere, and now there's even more to follow in your track, and to go try and figure out what to do. When if you were to just sit there in it a little bit longer, rather than numbing it out, bring some people in, maybe things would have looked a little different. I wonder if some of us have assumed no for the Lord, when the Lord never said no, but it was just easier to deny it than to have this hope that feels maybe false at times. Again, hidden grief. During the same time in my life when it was a lot of whipping whiplash at my work environment, um, I was still an undergrad, and I had gone into one of my professor's offices, a very trusted mentor, and I had told her what was going on and filtering on a situation, and I remember being so frustrated, and I just stood there, and then finally I sat down and I'm like waiting on some profound answer for her from her. And she just sits there in silence, and I'm like, so we don't say anything, like what's going on here? And she's just looking at me with these eyes, and I'm like, ugh, I'm gonna cry, don't make me cry. And to fill this space and this void, I just say, and I'm just mad, right? Like I'm trying to really prove my point of like respond to me. But this time I say it and I am holding back, feels like a waterfall of tears that are about to begin. And she takes my hand and looks me in the eyes and says, Sam, I don't think you're mad. I think you're just sad. And in that moment, oh, all of it came out weeping, and I had someone just sit with me as those floodgates opened, and I did not know what to do, but I had someone sitting with me in it, and I knew the Lord was in that moment with us. Maybe you've been in that moment, maybe you're there now. And I don't think most of us willingly end up in numb situations. I don't think most of us willingly said, I'm so angry, I'm so hateful, I have so much bitterness in my heart that I ended there. I think it all culminates into numbness because we are sad. Like the wisdom of my professor. Maybe you need to hear the words tonight. It's okay, maybe you feel mad, but maybe you also feel sad. I wonder if this is where Jairus was. Jesus, if only you had gotten here sooner, she would not have died. That dream would not have died. So we pick up in verse 36. Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, Don't be afraid, just believe. What's so profound in the midst of again this huge crowd? Jesus notices. He doesn't tell Jairus what he's about to do. He doesn't say, You can trust me because I'm gonna give you certainty. He just says, You can lean in again. Even when all these other people are saying, Why bother the teacher? Why, why try again? Jesus asks him, I would imagine him, fixing his eyes on him, saying, Trust me, believe again. And we read in, read on as Jesus gets into the house. Verse 39, he went in and said to them, Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep. But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, Talita kum, which means, little girl, I say to you, get up. Immediately the girl stood and began to walk around. She was twelve years old. At this, the people were astonished. Friends, God is a God of long stories and slow burns. But the Lord is not on our timeline. And that does not dismiss the pain that that waiting feels like. It does not make it easier. It does not solve or answer all of our questions in this lifetime. And if I'm fully transparent with you, I wish we could sit down for coffee and I can tell you all the reasons that things might be happening. I wish I had an answer for your greatest aches. I wish I could answer why some prayers get answered in this lifetime and some we keep waiting on. I don't know why some miracles happen and others feel like you are still waiting and trucking along. And though I don't have those answers, we see in this a testimony of a sick woman and Jairus' daughter, yes, receiving healing as a miracle. But also, may we never miss the miracle of their stubborn hold on to hope and their hope being Christ himself. They show different and both faithful responses of showing up to Christ. And if I'm going to point out what I believe, what we confess as Christians, is the greatest miracle of all, is that it is God with us in the resurrection, in the incarnation. God took on flesh to know your pain, to know your sorrows, to know your joys, that humankind, that our humanity, that our struggles was not so messed up that he would not come in to reclaim it and to come bring you home. This is not some false prosperity gospel around healing where, oh, cool, you're Christian, that means health and wealth. And this also isn't a vending machine, God, where we say E7, and we sit there in the tray and wait for our instructions manual to come out about what the next thing to do is. Because then our faith becomes transactional and God and us become just a robot that we can manufacture up. But this gospel recognizes something greater than we could ask or ever imagine of God with us. Where God cares about your broken dreams, weeps with you in that unrelenting pain, and wants to hold you in that breakthrough that you have been waiting on. Twelve years of pain. He wants to sit with you in it. I had mentioned earlier that I love how dynamic scripture is, how raw it is, how it doesn't hide what we feel and what we go through as humans. And one of my favorite books of the Bible that shows this is in the Psalms. Did you know that almost 40% of the Psalms is lament? And lament can be defined as a prayer where the author cries out to God during a time of deep suffering, grief, or crisis. AKA, it's not pretty. It's showing up to God without your bow tie, without your dress on. It's honest confessions. An example of this, Psalm 88, uh in verses 13 through 14. But I cry to you for help, Lord, in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? Wow, those are our faith ancestors. If the Psalms and our faith ancestors can throw their questions before God and we can too, surely God's shoulders are big enough for our doubts, our fears, our tears, the moments where we want to turn away, but we have one eye open peeking to see if Jesus is still there with us. Then if I can be so honest with you, I don't want to know a faith. I don't want to know a me where my greatest worship and intimacy with the Lord is not worship by words or song, but through tears. When I have nothing left but to trust that the Lord sees this tears streaming down my face ever so slowly, trusting that he sees my heart. Maybe the invitation for you tonight is to recognize the places where hope has dried up. And maybe Jesus is asking you, bring it to me. Maybe it's the first time. Hey Lord, I need to have a heart check with you tonight. We have some work to do. Or maybe for those of you who would say, I prayed this a hundred times, what could the 101 time of reaching again look like? It can be as simple as starting with, Lord, I am just devastated. And I need you to show up and believing that the Lord that we confess will show up and comfort you. There's a book called Lemons on Friday, um, called Trusting God Through My Greatest Heartbreak. The author is Maddie Jackson's luckman, and a quick excerpt I want to read. She had lost her husband, the love of her life, after not even a year of marriage, to a traumatic injury. And she writes on this tension of grief and hope. And she says, This my healing was now in the hands of the one who makes mountains out of mustard seeds, wine out of water, and beauty out of ashes. Only God can take something that feels like giving up and use it to bring back life, not in black and white, but in full, abundant, vibrant color. That is my prayer for all of us, that we have the courage to face the pain head on and to and the faith to take our hands off the hurt and lift our heads up to the healer. Highly recommend this book. And while we wait, question is for us today, for the rest of our lives, what do we do with this waiting? Who do we trust? While we weep, where do we go? In John 6, there is this moment where Jesus has a really difficult teaching, and a lot of his disciples leave. A lot of those in the crowd who are following him disperse. We're done. That's too difficult for us. And yet there's some who stay. And Peter is one of them. And Jesus asks, You don't want to leave too, do you? And Peter has the most beautiful answer, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. There's this hymn called It Is Well. Maybe you've heard it before. It's been modernized by different groups, but it's this core hymn to the church throughout centuries. And what I find so profound about it is that it's a song that you can hear that declares trust in God and the faithfulness of God through whatever waters you may go through. But I learned not too long ago the story behind this being written. See, there was this guy, and he had lost everything. And so his family is like, hey, we're gonna, you know, try and uproot our lives and go somewhere else, try and find a new job, new stability. And so he's wrapping up some things and he sends his four daughters and his wife off on a ship. Hey, I love you, I'll see you later. Um, I'll be just a few days behind you. Well, then, to his surprise, he gets a letter in the mail from his wife that says, Saved alone, after hearing about a shipwreck that all of them were in. And he knew what that meant. He knew his wife was one of the only survivors, and that meant he lost all four of his daughters. And I find so much courage in his words, where he responded in the most traumatic situation of grief with saying, When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know, it is well, it is well with my soul. We sing a song about the faithfulness of God that derives from a man who was going through the most unimaginable thing you could go through, and yet his hope was in Christ, and he was probably declaring this for himself to eventually believe it. When he was in desperation, the cracks and all the things that might have been shaking his foundation showed to be strong, and his faith was what he was able to fall back on and be held by the Lord. And so, because we get to declare whatever the trials, whatever we go through, whatever the joys, Lord, we will turn it to you. Lord, we trust you. Lord, to you we go. And so tonight I ask you, to whom shall you go? You've tried control, you've tried shutting down, you've tried numbing it out. So to whom shall we go? Not will Jesus answer yes, will Jesus answer no? Will Jesus answer now? The question becomes, where else would we go? Most of us will most likely not wake up tomorrow with a lightning strike of an answer and something of a map handed to us of everything that we need to do. But tonight we can reach. Tonight we're gonna do something different. You might see at the front there is an altar space set up. We're gonna have a few songs of extended worship. And I wanna challenge each and every single one of us to come up and grab a paper. You can write a prayer, you can grab one of the prayers that have been printed out. And whatever the Lord has been tugging on your heart, whether you write it in one word or a few, or you need a few cards to express what the Lord's doing with your heart, I challenge you, just like Jairus and the woman who was bleeding, I challenge you to have courageous vulnerability. Maybe no one else sees it. You don't need to go wave it around to everyone, but even just for you and the Lord to know, hey, we have some things to work out. You can leave it up here and our prayer team will pray over it, or you can take it with you as a reminder. And we'll also have our prayer team off to the sides ready to pray over you. If you want to just bring up one word and they will pray over it with you, or if you want to talk a little bit more, either way, they are ready to receive you. Maybe you come up here and it's for you. But maybe you come up here and it's for someone else. I have to say, I would not be standing here today if it weren't for those in my life who were reaching out for me when I could not reach myself. Maybe you don't exactly know why you're coming up here yet. Trust that the Lord will meet you there. May you find freedom to offer your questions, emotions, fears, the whole of who you are to God in all of the messy ways that it comes. There is no waste at this altar. There is no waste of any time spent with the Lord at his feet. When your wounds leave you desperate, may you keep reaching for Jesus with a stubborn hope. Would you pray with me as we reach again? Lord, when our hopes, when our joys, when our dreams, when our desires feel untouched, unseen, Lord, would you remind us to reach again? Would you remind us that the greatest miracle is not just the healing, Lord, but the greatest miracle is that you are with us, that you chose to come down in the incarnation, that you chose to take on flesh, you chose to take on our human condition and redeem it and redeem us to you. Or that you died on a cross through love so that we would be restored and forever get to know you and be held by you. Lord, when storms come our way, would our question be to whom else shall we go? We love you. Amen.