For many months, I have been digging deeper and deeper into the truth of covenant–our covenant with God, and how everything that God does is based on covenant. I truly believe that this revelation of our covenant with God is crucial in carrying out the assignments that God has placed on our lives here on earth. When Jesus walked this earth, He operated as a prophet in the Old Covenant, bringing healing, revelation, and deliverance to people everywhere.

In Luke 13, we find the story of the woman with a spirit of infirmity, who had been suffering for 18 years. While Jesus was in the synagogue, He saw her, called her to Him, and delivered her from that infirmity simply based on the fact that she had a covenant with God. However, after Jesus freed her from that, He was challenged by the religious leaders there for healing on the Sabbath day.. 

Luke 13:15-16, “The Lord then answered him, and said, ‘Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?’”

Notice what Jesus likens the healing of a covenant child to…watering an animal. It does not get much more simple than that, does it? Right now in this summertime heat, if I see one of my dogs thirsty, I stop whatever I am doing and give them water. It is one of the easiest and most readily available commodities to come by. This is how God looks at healing too–it’s water. Stop looking at healing as hard; for a covenant child, it’s water!

Then in Matthew 15, we find another woman in need of healing for her daughter who did not have a covenant with God, so she cried out for mercy a couple of times before Jesus answered her. Contrary to what many believe, Jesus was not being rude to her when He replied to her cry for help with the following statement, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He was simply stating the fact that, at the time, His current day ministry was that of an Old Covenant prophet, and there really was nothing He could do for her. He was anointed for the covenant people of God. Then after that reply, her faith reached into a realm that she had no legal right to.

Matthew 15:25-28, “Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ But He answered and said, ‘It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it to dogs.’ And she said, ‘Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.’ Then Jesus answered and said unto her, ‘O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.” 

This woman, after being told “no” multiple times, came back with a statement that shook the world when she said, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.” Jesus called this great faith, and her faith trumped every boundary that surrounded her.

Notice what healing is likened to in this passage–bread. Again, as far as food is concerned, it does not get much simpler than bread, does it? Child of God, remember this–healing is simple; it’s like bread and water! For one woman, He called her to Him and healed her based on her covenant. Then for the other woman, He attributed her faith for that healing, and this is the kind of faith we ought to aspire to…a faith that won’t quit and won’t be offended away. 

This Canaanite woman demonstrated the power of faith when she reached into a dispensation that had not yet begun. Just some months later, the covenant that provided what she wanted was in force, but at the moment of her cry for help, with her faith, she reached over and took something early. That tells me that I too can reach over and take some things early. Everyone is waiting on Jesus to come back to set things right, but like this woman, we too can reach over and set some things in order. That’s the power of faith! 

Friend, we live in a time when our attention must be on the Lord, attentive to what He said. God has given us great and precious promises regarding every arena of life, and it is with our faith that we bring order to our lives!