Initiating contact with God's power

Initiating contact with God's power is presented as an active theology of faith: a believer does not merely wait for a sensation, a minister's touch, or a convenient moment, but deliberately reaches toward God's presence until divine power meets the need. The governing image is the woman with the issue of blood, whose healing came when she pressed through the crowd and touched Jesus's garment; her action becomes a pattern for moving from hidden suffering to acknowledged faith, from receiving power to transmitting it.

Definition and Biblical Image

The concept begins with a decisive distinction between being touched by God and reaching out to touch the source of His power. The woman with the issue of blood had suffered for twelve years, yet the account emphasizes that she initiated the contact. She did not wait for Jesus to find her or make her condition the center of attention. She moved toward Him, reached through the crowd, and touched the edge of His cloak. In the book's interpretation, this action demonstrates that faith can take physical form: pursuit becomes a gesture, and the gesture becomes the point at which healing is received.

The crowd supplied the contrast. Many people pressed around Jesus, but only one touch was recognized as distinctive. The book uses Jesus's question, "Who touched me?" as evidence that proximity alone is not the same as faith-filled contact. People may be close to divine activity without personally reaching for it. The woman's touch stood out because it combined need, decision, expectation, and action; it was not simply accidental contact within a busy crowd.

Her touch is also interpreted through the symbolism of the garment's hem. The hem, or border, was understood as a doubled and therefore strong portion of the fabric, while the garment's tassels were associated with wings. At her lowest point of need, the woman reached for the lowest part of Jesus's garment and exchanged her weakness for His strength. The image joins bodily humility with refuge: reaching down to the hem becomes reaching into the place where healing and protection are found.

Faith as Deliberate Pursuit

The book identifies several elements in the woman's action. First, she initiated contact rather than waiting passively. Second, she pressed toward Jesus after twelve years of illness, treating the long duration of her suffering not as a reason to stop but as a reason to continue. Third, she had exhausted other possibilities and made Jesus her only remaining solution. Her pursuit therefore expresses both desperation and priority: God is not an afterthought but the destination toward which every available effort is directed.

Her words and actions also agree. She believed that she would be made whole and placed conduct behind that conviction. The fact that Jesus was moving in another direction and that she approached from behind did not become an argument that He was ignoring her. Instead, the apparent lack of direct attention intensified her determination. The book treats this as a model of faith that refuses to interpret silence or delay as rejection.

Initiating contact requires exposure. The woman's inward condition could not remain private once she entered the crowd and was identified. Her hemorrhage, ritual uncleanness, fear, and shame became visible rather than remaining concealed. The book argues that hidden issues can drain the life from a person's spiritual walk just as hemorrhaging drains physical life. Avoiding prayer, ministry, an altar call, or a public request for help may protect a person's appearance temporarily, but it also allows the underlying problem to continue.

The exposure is not portrayed as divine humiliation. Jesus does not turn the woman away after her condition becomes known, and the book stresses that He is not seeking to condemn or embarrass those who reach out to Him sincerely. Her openness makes her a candidate for mercy rather than a target of shame. The decisive movement is consequently away from concealment and toward contact: the believer runs toward God instead of hiding behind an improvised covering, as Adam and Eve hid after their sin.

Maturity, Dependence, and the Number Twelve

The two healing narratives involving the woman with the issue of blood and the twelve-year-old girl provide the book with a model of two different spiritual conditions. The adult woman represents believers and the church that have had years in which to grow, yet may remain trapped in recurring issues while waiting for God or a pastor to initiate every encounter. Mature faith, in this account, does not mean that a believer never needs ministry. It means learning to seek God directly, to press toward His power, and to begin time with Him without waiting for an external touch.

The young girl represents the opposite condition. Because she is still a child, the book reads her as an image of believers who never reach spiritual maturity and therefore die before entering their full destiny. Such believers depend on others to meet every need and do not develop the ability to touch God or initiate fellowship with Him. Her healing comes when Jesus touches her, illustrating that immature Christians require the special care and ministry of the church while they are being brought toward maturity.

The recurrence of twelve gives these stories a kingdom and ecclesial significance in the book's reading. The woman endured twelve years of illness, the girl was twelve years old, and the twelve disciples appear afterward as those entrusted with power. The sequence moves from the mature believer who initiates contact, through the child who receives help from mature ministry, to the church sent out to exercise and distribute the power it has received. The number therefore connects individual healing with the growth and mission of the wider body of Christ.

From Receiving Power to Becoming a Source

The book insists that the virtue received from Jesus remains available. The goal is not for believers to remain permanent consumers of healing, encouragement, or ministry, but to become carriers of the same power. After the two female figures, Jesus gives the twelve disciples power to minister, creating a transition from contact with Him to contact with the world through them.

A mature church is consequently defined not as one that continues hemorrhaging from unresolved issues, but as one capable of touching other lives. Believers are described as becoming, in effect, the garment or body of Christ that others can reach. When people bring sickness, bondage, or other problems to them, the power of God within them is expected to confront those problems and allow the virtue received from Jesus to pass onward.

This outward movement includes laying hands on the sick, witnessing recovery, prophesying, operating in the gifts of the Spirit, casting out devils, and ministering the Word of God. The book presents these activities as the purpose for which believers were created and as signs that the church has moved beyond powerless religion. Reports of people reaching for God's power during ministry meetings reinforce the image: even after a meeting ends, desperate people may continue seeking contact with the anointing carried by ministers.

Persistence, Prayer, and Practical Consequences

Initiating contact is inseparable from persistence. The book elsewhere defines importunity as shameless, bold, determined, pressing, entreating, and persistent requesting, and connects it with Jesus's teaching to pray without fainting. The believer who reaches toward God's power must continue pressing when the answer is delayed, the emotional atmosphere is dry, or the issue appears unchanged. Refusing to leave God alone becomes a sustained posture rather than a single dramatic gesture.

That posture is supported by a praying church and by a life that makes God's kingdom a priority. The book criticizes churches that replace regular prayer meetings with meals, brief teaching, or other programs because attendance is low, arguing that the loss of prayer may help explain the lack of miracles. It describes the church as meant to be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves in which competing priorities steal the place of fellowship and supernatural ministry.

The same logic appears in the teaching on sowing and harvest. Time spent privately in prayer, service within the body of Christ, and financial offerings are treated as seeds. During the waiting period, believers are to water those seeds by praising God, speaking about His promises, and refusing to quit during spiritual drought. Initiating contact therefore involves not only a moment of reaching out but also a repeated discipline of prayer, confession, worship, and expectation.

The final appeal turns the concept into a decision. Readers are urged to seek an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, spend quality time with Him daily, ask for His presence, and pray a commitment to pursue Him until blessing comes. The book's closing invitation presents this pursuit as both conversion and continuing discipleship: a person is asked to receive forgiveness, welcome Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and choose a life that will not retreat from God. The concept ends where it began, with active contact—reaching toward divine power until personal issues stop and the believer is equipped to help others face theirs.