TGC: Crawford Loritts
Crawford Lorrits pastors a church near Atlanta, Georgia and the man is a quote machine. He preached on Luke 8:26–56 and Christ’s healing of the demon-possessed man, Jairus’s daughter and the women with the discharge. I won’t do him justice here, but I’m going to try and paraphrase some of his main points.
Each figure came desperate. The demon-possessed man broke chains and no one could calm him down. Those around him didn’t know what to do. This man could not be controlled or contained. Jairus’s daughter was dying, he was desperate to save her, so desperate he went to Jesus. Finally, the woman who touched Jesus was desperate after years of discharging blood. She was Jewish and therefore unclean, for years she had to live this way. She thought to herself if I could just touch this man Jesus’ cloak, then I can finally be well.
Loritts stopped at this point and said ‘You haven’t done expositional preaching until you drop the text into its emotional context.’ You cannot simply be ho-hum about a first century Jewish woman who had a discharge of blood for years without delivering how devastating this is. You cannot simply skip the pain of Jairus, you must demonstrate how he must feel. If scripture is true, it must bare emotional weight.
He then went back to the text and said ‘Jesus is Lord over the Devil, over disease and over death.’ However, 100% of the people Jesus healed, died. The miracles are never about life, they are about Jesus. It’s not about the miracle, it’s about the Messiah.’
From here, I’ll just paraphrase a few more quotes from his conclusion.
‘Faith is never theoretical, No such thing as faith separate from desperation.’
‘Inadequcy and suffering are our friends, Holy handicaps.’ 2 Cor. 12:9, your greatest friend is knowing that you can’t do this.’
But Christ can.