What a picture of us! We are dying people, morally and spiritually, and getting worse. We try to improve ourselves but it does not help. You may be buoyant – ‘I raced through life and obtained some happiness, but then down I went; I sought a deeper meaning in life but couldn’t find it. I sampled the pleasures and entertainments of this world; I explored different religions – Islam, Hinduism, mysticism – but it didn’t help me. Then trouble came into my life and disappointment.’ We need to reach the point where we come to an end of ourselves and stop experimenting and come to Christ for salvation.
There is a sense in which the whole of life is a haemorrhage. No doubt that she would have suffered from a host of related problems. If not joined to the Lord, the years can leak away. Youth is gone, your best days are gone, your strength is gone, and character has drained away. We start with very little character, but even such as we have is lost. There is some conscience, some idealism; we want to make some contribution, but even this drains away. Later we regard our youth as naïve. Sometimes we feel the emptiness of life and we brush it away with anything that helps us get past it.
The trouble is with us, when it comes to spiritual matters and the healing of the soul. and the seeking of new life in conversion, we don't even accept that we are lost, that we are sick, that we are in need of help. We are so programmed by this world, we think this world is everything, and we love it, and we are going to make our fortune in it. We have been completely conquered by the propaganda of this world, and we don't take the slightest interest in our Creator, or eternity, or the soul. In our conceit we are even proud of our ignorance and our lack of desire for healing of the soul, and we think that somehow this makes us really intelligent and deep-thinking people. ‘We are not like those religious people. What a pathetic state to be in! We are the people!’ No, you are the people completely befuddled, fooled, brainwashed by this present world. We live limited lives for the here and now, knowing nothing of eternal purpose, and the living God, having no relationship with him: without God and without hope. That's the reality. At least this poor woman was a fighter; she was a searcher and that's what we need to be. May the Spirit of God, stir us in such a way we become anxious about the soul and we begin to seek.
Her blood was draining away. Blood is not intended to leak out and waste. What are you pouring out your lifeblood for? Is there nothing for God in your life? What did last year accomplish? If God asked us, ‘What does your life amount to?’ how would we answer? A haemorrhage is out of control. There was nothing they could do for her. You are in the grip of forces around you. You can’t plan your life. Perhaps you are in the grip of fashions; they mean so much to you; you have to conform. Maybe you cannot control your temper, or you are overcome by depression, or by your desires. You are not a person in control of your life, on a steady course.
Some of us in this world have no will to live. We don’t think about what will happen to us beyond the grave. ‘I have no security eternally, but it doesn’t bother me.’ We are in a serious condition. It is true that so often the last person we will seek is the Lord. Maybe everything has to go wrong before we will consider God. But there is no remedy in this world for the void within – the sin-sick soul.
Have you ever heard people ask, ‘Do you want to be saved? Just say, “Lord Jesus come into my heart and forgive me, Amen.”’ That is so superficial. That is a get out, a phrase that diverts. If you really want to find the Lord, you must go into a secret place and say, ‘Lord, I have been wicked and there is no excuse, I have done this and that.’ You cannot provide an inventory of all your sin; it would take too long, but there must be some detail. You must see that Christ died to take the punishment for sinners, and therefore for you, if you trust in him. You must be willing to leave your sin forever, and to let him change you profoundly. You must be willing to follow him as your Lord. So if you think you are a Christian because you only prayed some superficial prayer, then you need to examine yourself to see whether you are in the faith.