And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. (Mark 5:15 ESV)
And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. (Mark 5:17 ESV)
THE LORD PROMISES GOOD THINGS for us — hope and a future — if we would trust Him, but so often, we shrink back into the familiar, afraid to take the next step.
What holds us back?
The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) describe an encounter Jesus had with demons in the area of the Gerasenes region, where He dispatched a legion of evil spirits from torturing the town madman and sent them into a nearby herd of 2,000 pigs, who rushed down a steep bank and were drowned.
The outraged and frightened herdsmen ran to tell the townspeople what had just happened (“Com
e quick!” they might have said. “You won’t believe this! You know that deranged dude? And the pigs? Well, you’ll just have to see this.”), and the townspeople immediately ran to the side of the lake where Jesus was teaching His disciples. Once they arrived, they begged the Lord to leave.
What?!
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AS WE READ THE ACCOUNT, safe and comfortable in our armchairs, most of us cannot imagine how the townspeople could have begged Jesus Christ, the Son of the Creator, to leave their village, when He had just demonstrated God’s amazing grace by healing the town madman. Continue reading “Fearing to Trust: Do We Miss God’s Open Doors?”
LoveAndGrace 