There can be no healing of your being, let alone any forgiveness, or any granting of spiritual life and communion with God, until you long to be healed. And how can you long to be healed and forgiven if you don't even appreciate how sick you are? We see how far God has to bring people? Here is mankind so proud, so full of itself, so buoyant. When the Lord God looks down upon this world, the first thing he has got to do is humble us. He has got to do is make us aware how ill we are, what our needs are, to strip us of our self-confidence. The next thing he has to do is cause us to long to be healed and to hunger and thirst for salvation. Then he has to wean us from our confidence in ourselves, this idea that we can solve all our own problems. Then he has to wean us from confidence in the world around us. Just see what a deep blessing there is in this healing. The woman longs to be healed. She has lost confidence in the physicians. She now knows that none of them can make her any better. We have to be able to say, I am sick in my soul. I am far from God. I am a rebel against him. I cannot improve myself, and I am in serious and deep trouble. I am coming to trust in God, the living God. Christ is worth more than all the combined agencies of this world. That's what you have to come to understand. That is a hard thing to understand when you're seeking the Lord, but you have to apply yourself to this.
This is what encourages the language of faith. We can approach him by prayer from anywhere. It could be a desperate soldier in a trench terrified out of his life, certain to die. It could be somebody walking along a street, quite alone. From wherever you are you can call upon his name and he will hear you. You don't have to find a shrine or a priest or anything like that. What if I've committed the worst of sins and betrayed people on every hand, and been desperately cruel? What if I've done terrible things? If you come with a repentant heart, he will hear you. If you have never prayed before in your life and you don't know how to do it, he will listen to your prayer, even if you don't know any correct terms to use. In his kindness and in his mercy, he will listen to anyone who is ready to repent of his sin. I need my character to be changed. I need to come into communion with him. I need eternal life and he is approachable.
We too must seek him by faith. I have heard of Christ. I have a great need. I have heard of his approachability. I have heard of what he did on Calvary's Cross for needy sinners. I will come, and even though now he is in heaven, he is in glory and I cannot physically see him, I believe that just to bow my head or to go on my knees in private at home; just to call upon his name from the depths of my heart, he will hear me, because he is the everlasting God. He knows everything that ever has happened and ever will happen, and he knows it is me. He knows my sinfulness, and my need, and he knows I want him and I need him, and I'm going to rely on him and come to him, and he will forgive me. He has the power. He has borne the punishment of sin for all who he inspires to come to him, and he will make me clean and change my life.’ So the language of faith just speaks to God directly, speaks to Christ simply and directly. As one said, ‘Father, I trembling come to you’, and so we approach the Lord Jesus Christ for pardon and forgiveness by faith.