In today’s passage, Jesus tells Jairus “Do not fear, only believe.” (Mark 5:36). As Christ followers, we are told the same thing (for more examples reference Isaiah 41:10, 2 Timothy 1:7, 1 John 4:8). Often, our belief is accompanied by fear.  As a lifelong Cubs fan, I believe every April is the year that we will win it all. Every year, sometimes as early as June, the fear creeps in that maybe my belief was misplaced. Jesus tells us that fear and faith do not belong together.

A lot of people follow superstitions. Baseball players jog off the diamond making sure not to step on the chalk lines. People avoid black cats and open ladders. Superstitions are not new, even back in the first century there were many “ideas” about how to cure ailments.

The love Jesus has for us is extravagant!  We should not be surprised that Jesus went across the raging Sea of Galilee, not to teach thousands or feed hundreds, but to cast demons out of one man.  Jesus’ love for the “one” is apparent in the parables of the lost coin, lost sheep, and the prodigal son (Luke 15). We should also not be surprised that the man, with whom Jesus helped, wanted to follow Jesus.  What may be surprising is that Jesus said “no” to this request, and instead wanted the man to stay behind and declare what the Lord had done for him.

There are a couple of important things to look for when you start taking medication. The first is the desired outcome, meaning you respond to the medication and it does the job it was prescribed to do. The second is you have a reaction to the medication, typically a negative effect that the medicine has on your system.  Over the next couple of days, we are going to look at two specific reactions to Jesus’ casting of the demons out of the man from Gerasenes: the reaction of the townspeople and the reaction of the man himself.

When I was a kid, my mom would call me for dinner by my name.  If I failed to respond, this was followed by my first and middle name. If that still didn’t carry me homeward, she would use my full name.  This represented a full authority over me and an extreme likelihood that I would be making my way home to dinner.