Father, I Stretch My Hands to Thee
And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 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. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 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 freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:25-34).
This woman’s, suffering “issue” was one of a physical nature. She seeks after Jesus for her physical condition. Because of her faith in Him she received a physical and spiritual healing. She had suffered with her issue for 12 years. Do you have an “issue” that you are suffering with and have been suffering for years? Take it to Jesus, leave it, and He will heal you of it, as He did this woman, whom He called , “daughter”. It doesn’t matter how long you have been suffering or what it is you are suffering with, Jesus can heal it. Don’t let your issue or people get in the way of your ‘holistic healing’, run after Him and tell Him:
Father, I stretch my hands to Thee,
No other help I know;
If Thou withdraw Thyself from me,
Ah! whither shall I go?What did Thine only Son endure,
Before I drew my breath!
What pain, what labor, to secure
My soul from endless death!Surely Thou canst not let me die;
O speak, and I shall live;
And here I will unwearied lie,
Till Thou Thy Spirit give.Author of faith! to Thee I lift
My weary, longing eyes:
O let me now receive that gift!
My soul without it dies.— Charles Wesley, “Father, I Stretch My Hands to Thee”