You Can Heal Me!

And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. Luke 5:12-16

Steps: 1,2,3,11,12


The man in this story had a case of leprosy – a nerve deteriorating disease that takes away your sense of pain and slowly causes problems in the skin and nervous system. It is a slow and miserable to die. In old Jewish culture once you had this disease you were required to leave society and live in leper colonies lest you contaminate someone else with this disease. So this man knew that it was not likely that a Rabbi would listen to him and give him instruction on how to be right with God. Yet he had heard enough about Jesus to predict that if he approached Jesus to heal him Jesus would not run away from him. So he came to Jesus and said “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” His testimony of faith proved to be accurate. Jesus did heal him, but in a unique manner, Jesus reached out and touched him. This is a remarkable testimony for a Jew for all Jews would feel contaminated if they touched someone who had been pronounced unclean. Yet although Jesus could have healed him with a word instead Jesus touched him, knowing that many people would turn away from following Jesus because of touching a person who was diseased.


Prayer for Today: God, thanks that you would, and did reach out to us and touch us. We ask today that You will heal us from our disease of addiction. As You know many of us do not want to ask You for help, we would rather hope that something will change so we don’t have to ask for help. But thank You for Your willingness to work with us in recovery. We need You very much.