Keep On Believing

The story of Jairus and the healing of his daughter is one of my favourite Bible passages.

If we read the story leading up to today’s verse, we see Jesus setting off to go back with Jairus to his house, only to be held up by someone else needing His attention. I can imagine Jairus becoming more and more anxious as he waited for Jesus, acting out of compassion, to bring restoration into the life of the woman with the issue of blood.

Then Jairus sees people from his household arriving, bringing news he didn’t want to hear. They got straight to the point, saying, “Your daughter is dead”. His sense of loss, as those words hit home, must have been so traumatic. Imagine how he must have felt to hear them go on to say, “There’s no use troubling the Teacher now.” It was as if they were saying, “Okay. You gave it a shot. It didn’t work. Let’s get back to dealing with the things that have to be done now”.

How many times in our lives have we approached a situation with faith only to find out there was more to it than we imagined, or the situation had changed in a way we weren’t expecting?

I love the way Jesus responded. He didn’t even entertain, or listen to, any part of the word that was brought by the messengers from the household of Jairus. In fact, where it says, ‘He overheard what was said’, some Bible versions insert, ‘and ignored’.

This was quite a strong response by Jesus. He didn’t give the enemy a look in. He didn’t allow a seed of negativity to start germinating and growing. I can imagine Jesus looking at Jairus and reassuring him with these words. “It’s okay. Nothing has changed here”.

On the outside it looked like a whole new ball game, but for Jesus the outcome was still going to be the same.

What can we learn from this? We need to keep on believing. So, let me encourage you to keep trusting. Try not to give the enemy a way into your heart with doubt and fear. Remember that, however difficult things may seem, they are never too difficult with Jesus.