You can stand shoulder to shoulder with a crowd around Jesus and still never truly connect. That’s the uncomfortable question raised by Mark 5, where people press in from every side, yet only one person reaches out in a way Jesus calls faith, and her life changes immediately. We start a new summer sermon series on biblical faith by getting specific: faith is not vague positivity or spiritual hype. It is active trust in what is true and reliable, even when you cannot see the outcome, grounded in Hebrews 11:1.

We break down how faith works in everyday life and then move into the woman with the issue of blood. Her story shows why proximity to Christian culture is not the same as trusting Christ. From there, we trace three clear pathways that often lead people to real Christian faith: desperation when our fixes fail, information about who Jesus is and what he has done, and identification where we stop trusting ourselves and name Jesus as the one true object of our faith. Along the way, we tackle a common misunderstanding: it’s not the strength of your faith that saves you, it’s the object of your faith.

Finally, we connect faith to the heart of the gospel: substitution. Jesus becomes weak so we can become strong, bearing sin and judgment like the true High Priest and fulfilling the promise echoed in Isaiah 53 and clarified in 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VllFriUUi-0