Jesus' Touch, Mark 1:29-31

Now as soon as they had come out of the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. But Simon's wife's mother lay sick with fever, and they told Him about her at once. So He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her. And she served them.

     Jesus came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her, and she served them. When we call upon Jesus, He has compassion on us, coming to us and taking our hand, He lifts us up out of the mire and out of our despair, our "fever", making us whole again, that we may return to the work that He has called us to do.
     We may think that we have fallen into a pit and He is far out of ear's reach where He cannot hear us calling, or that for some reason He does hear us call but is leaving us down there for a little while to teach us a lesson. But such is not the case. When we come to Jesus, when we call out to Him, when we ask Him to come and tell Him of our infirmities, our weaknesses, confessing to Him our sins and failures, He doesn't leave us in them to wallow in misery and learn a lesson, but rather He comes to us when we call and pulls us up out of them.
     Jesus doesn't want us to remain unusable, unable to serve Him, unable to function in the body of Christ, but He created us for a purpose, to love Him and serve Him, to bring glory and honor to God. It doesn't bring glory and honor to God for us to be laying on our sickbed, ill with fever, unable to serve in any capacity. And by this I mean that it doesn't please Him for us to be ill with sin, unable to serve Him or fulfill the calling He has commissioned us for. He desires that we be freed from bondage to sin, from our ill-state, and when we ask Him to take us out of it, He comes to us to do so.
     The thing that caught my attention about this passage was that Jesus came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her. When Jesus picks us up, we are up. He is strong, mighty, and able to deliver. He doesn't pick us up and we are still down. It seems rather obvious, but somehow we feel that though He picks us up we are going to fall back down or that we aren't really up or something to that effect. But that's not the case. When He picks us up, His strong hands grasping ours, His strength pulling up our dead weight-- it's all Him-- we are up!

     So here I lay, Lord, sick with infirmity, ill with sin, unable to rise from my sickbed, unable to serve You in the manner in which You have called me-- please come at once and deliver me, save me, and lift me up from this bed of sin so that I might serve You, Jesus. And I have Your assurance that You will come now to free me, so that I might arise and serve You. Thank You, Jesus, Thank You!