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: Jesus Heals a Woman and Jairus’s Daughter – 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)

Transcript

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.

Hope Blanton

Hope Blanton is a wife, mom, and therapist at Kaleo Counseling. Hope uses her skills as a counselor to loves to create questions which help us consider what Scripture means for our hearts, minds, habits, fears, and relationships. Hope is a feeler, funny, organized, and endlessly asking questions to draw people out and make them feel known.

Christine Gordon

Christine (Chris) is a wife, mom, and seminary graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary. Christine has served on women’s ministry teams at multiple churches and loves to excavate deep biblical truths and explain them in an easy to understand way. Christine is quirky, loves to dance, cannot multi-task to save her life, and regularly embarrasses her children.

Connect with Hope and Christine

Website: At His Feet Studies

Instagram: @athisfeetstudies

Facebook: @athisfeetstudies

Is Faith Bold or Weak?

As we talked about the story of the bleeding woman on the Live Like It’s True podcast this week, Hope said something that I keep thinking about:

“We think of someone who’s filled with faith as having strong belief and robust faith. But… this is a desperate, weak, needy person, and so it’s not like: I’m coming so emboldened and empowered and on fire for the Lord. [It’s more like] I’m coming out of total desperation.

Her faith is a desperate faith. It’s different than what we like to praise in the church or praise as really bold, great faith. This is a needy, desperate faith which drove her to Jesus and got her there.” Hope Blanton

She’s right, isn’t she? We do usually think of people with “great faith” as being confident, strong, and inspiring. And yet, this woman was none of those things. Her faith was desperate. It was borne out of weakness, not strength. She slipped up behind, rather than approaching Jesus with confidence. And she had no intention of inspiring anyone; rather she wanted to slip back into anonymity.

And yet, in spite of all these things, Jesus noticed her faith. He dignified her by calling her daughter. He made her an example for all of us to follow.

Are you feeling weak? Desperate, even? Faith is reaching for Jesus as your only and last hope.