Matthew 9:20-22 tells of the woman who reaches out to touch Jesus to clear up the hemorrhage she had for the previous 12 years. This story is told in the middle of the story of the synagogue leader who had come to Jesus after his daughter had just died. Tuesday’s blog discusses the story with the synagogue leader and his act of desperation. Today’s story is also one of desperation and hope. According to Mark’s version, this woman had suffered a great deal from many doctors and had spent everything she had to pay them. This woman had gotten it into her mind that if she could just touch Jesus’ robe then everything would be OK.

Sometimes we tie big ‘miracles’ with daring acts. What was her daring act? She was considered ‘unclean’ because of the bleeding. This was a big deal especially for a rabbi or teacher in the Jewish community. There was a whole ritual that had to be performed after touching something unclean. She thought she could just slip in, touch his robe and no one would be the wiser and the act of touching Jesus was so tied up in her mind with being healed that it worked!

Let’s put this in modern terms. We have all heard of (if not actually experienced) an undiagnosed ailment. This may be a pain with no known organic reason. This could be a crippling disorder that just does not respond to medication. Whatever it is the person can see many doctors and go through all kinds of painful procedures and spend all their money and still be in pain. What our medicine fails to consider is the emotional basis of our illness.

When medicine fails there is often another reason for the illness and that is often emotional. There is a modern method that can often handle the emotional distress that is causing an illness. That is Meridian Tapping or EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). Through the expert handling of an experienced EFT practitioner, the emotional basis of the illness can be determined and then treated with a meridian tapping technique.
For more information on Meridian Tapping or EFT, go to www.naturallyresilient.com.

Tomorrow I will cover another aspect of this story: Jesus feeling the energy going out of him.

Matthew 9:2-8 is another healing story but I think it has an interesting twist. A paralyzed man was brought to Jesus and “Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, ‘Take heart, son! Your sins are forgiven.’”

Two things I want to point out, first who had the faith? It says seeing ‘their’ faith. Was this the faith of the men who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus or did this include the paralyzed man’s faith. I doubt that the paralyzed man had much if any say in where his friends took him so it may have just been the faith of the friends that Jesus could heal their friend. To me this says that the faith of another can help someone else. This is where prayers for someone else can be beneficial.

The second twist was the change in wording from what Jesus usually said. The usual phrase Jesus used in healing was ‘your faith has healed you’, but here he says ‘your sins are forgiven’.

Many illnesses are caused by our emotional state. I have seen many emotional problems manifest in physical form. It is often our emotional state knocking us in the head to get our attention but we still ignore them because our society and culture has so disjointed ourselves into compartments that don’t mix. We have doctors for the physical, psychologist for the mental and priest for the spiritual crisis. But a crisis in any one of these can cause changes and problems in one or two of the others. We are all tied together, we are not three different elements (body, mind and spirit) separated but one being that integrates all three.

This man may have been going through a spiritual crisis over some action that he could not move past and his body was accommodating this crisis by freezing or paralyzing his body so he could not physically move forward. By releasing and forgiving the event that sent him into the spiritual crisis the body followed suit and released the paralysis!

This is the story where Jesus cast demons out of two men. The demons enter a herd of pigs and the herd runs down the steep hillside and drowns in the lake. The herdsmen FLED to the nearby city and told everyone what happened. The ENTIRE town came out to meet this Jesus but instead of praising him for helping the two men, they beg him to go away and leave them alone.

Note the words and the event. The herdsmen “fled” to the nearby town. Fled has a special connotation. It means they are fleeing from something, it implies fear. The “entire” town came out, this can mean all kinds of things, the first thing that pops into mind is safety in numbers which is again a fear mentality. Then the people beg him to go away. Sounds like fear again.

How many times do we reject something because we are afraid? Think of what all we miss; the opportunities, the possibilities, the learning; all because we are afraid. What did the town miss out on because of their fear? They missed out on many more miracles and some great enlightening sermons.

What were they afraid of? It could have been economic disaster. The loss of a herd of pigs probably did set someone back economically. But what would have become of that person if he had invited Jesus to come to his house?

Sometimes when uncertainty hits, whether it is economic or health or relationships, we get stuck in the now and don’t look at the possibilities or the bigger picture. We lose sight of the miracles.

What does fear have to do with manifesting? Lots! Fear is the biggest impediment to manifesting that I know of. Fear prevents you from seeing the open doors, fear can lead to depression and anxiety. To manifest you must be optimistic and believe in a fabulous outcome and fear prevents this. Fear causes you to focus on the material, as the towns people did, and not see the fabulous miracle in front of you.

When things seem to be going against you, turn your thoughts around and start to look for the good and the promising and replace the fear with hope and faith that a better future is possible.

These verses talk about Jesus sleeping in the boat when a storm comes up and the disciples panic and wake Jesus up. Jesus says “Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!”. Then he rebuked the wind and waves and calms the water. The disciples were amazed.

There are several things I want to point out in this. First Jesus asks why are they afraid and comments on their lack of faith. This applies to life in general. Let’s make this more personal. What are you afraid of? If you have a fear in your life the second question applies. Where is your faith?

Faith involves a trust that you will be ok, that you will be taken care of and it even goes beyond that to believing that the best possible outcome will occur. Faith is required in manifesting. You have to believe that what you want to occur will occur, in fact you have to believe or know that what you expect to occur will happen. You have to do more than want, you have to expect. You may want something but expect something else to happen. Your want and your expectation must be in congruence.

The second thing is that Jesus calmed the water. When you have Faith, the turmoil in life will calm. When you put your total trust and believe in a great outcome, the troubles you are in will seem smaller.

There is actually a more practical side to these verses. Jesus implies that if the disciples had faith, they could calm the waters. We don’t realize what power we have. This is where I will get a little weird for some of you. We can control the weather. All the turmoil in the world contributes a large part to the turmoil in the weather along with earthquakes and volcanoes.

When my son was younger, we would sit on the swings and call up rain clouds. Sometimes it would take a couple days when there was no clouds and we were in the middle of a drought, but they would come. I quit doing it because it gave me a headache. Jesse however did it with ease. Try it yourself.

This is another healing story. This time it is Peter’s mother-in-law (you never hear about Peter’s wife). This woman was in bed with a high fever but when Jesus touched her hand, the fever left and she got up and prepared a meal.

How many people do you know that can be very sick one minute then the next minute be well enough to feel like cooking for a guest?

The above verses go on to tell how people were brought to Jesus and he healed all the sick.

This reminds me of Dr. Eric Pearl, you can read his story in The Reconnection He heals all kinds of diseases and teaches other to heal also! I will take a class from him sometime. Dr. Pearl refuses to see the imperfection, the problem he doesn’t even want to know what the affliction is because what he does is to see the person as perfect and whole. His belief is so strong that the perfect and whole manifest!

This also leads me to think of the many articles I have read lately concerning the placebo effect. Researchers are discovering that in many cases the placebo actually does better than the drug being tested. They have even gone back to retest established drugs and are finding this to be so.

What all this boils down to is the ceremony. All through history and different cultures there have been healers of different types, Doctors, Shamans, Medicine Men etc but all they provide is a ritual. And this ritual whether it is a pill, incantations or surgery, if the patient believes it will work it probably will! It is all placebo effect but you have to believe with an unwavering faith.

When I was young, I had warts and one doctor told me to cut a potato in half and rub my warts with it then bury the potato under the house and my warts would disappear. I really did not believe this but tried it anyway and guess what it did not work. If he had done a better sells job I might have believed and then it would have worked. Our minds are much more powerful than we may think (and it is that unbelief that limits us).

Matthew 8:2-3 says “Suddenly, a man with leprosy approached Jesus. He knelt before him, worshiping. “Lord,” the man said, “if you want to, you can make me well again.” Jesus touched him. “I want to,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared. “

I ask you whose will healed the leper? Was it Jesus or the Leper?

Matthew 8:5-13 is a similar story where a Roman officer comes to Jesus pleading with him to heal his young servant who was “in bed, paralyzed and racked with pain”. The Roman officer impressed Jesus because he said “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed! I know, because I am under the authority of my superior officers and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say , ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come.’ And they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this or that,’ they do it.” Jesus told the Roman officer, “Go on home. What you have believed has happened.” And the young servant was healed that same hour.

Again I ask, whose ‘will’ actually caused the healing?

In the first healing, Jesus touched the leper which was totally taboo so Jesus already believed the leper was healed. In the second healing, Jesus did not even see the sick man and yet the young man was healed.

In both situations someone was asking for a healing with the belief that Jesus could heal. I believe that the belief was very important. If they had such belief in anything or anyone else it would have occurred.

Belief is a main requirement for manifesting. This is not the superficial, ‘I believe’ but the deep undeniable belief that this is the way it is. So I see that the people asking were the ones who actually created the healing. Remember the many times that Jesus said “your belief has made you well”.