From Outsider to Family

The gospel does not just make unclean people clean. It makes outsiders family.

Speaker: Pastor Caleb Culver
Date: July 12, 2026

Through faith in Jesus, those who were once excluded, broken, and unclean are not only restored but fully welcomed into God’s family. Check out this powerful sermon from Pastor Caleb Culver as he continues our Encounters series!

Here's a 5-day devotional guide based on this sermon:

Day 1: The Weight of Not Belonging

Mark 5:25–27 | Psalm 25:16

This woman lived for twelve years believing she did not belong anywhere. Not in her community, not in her synagogue, not among her own family. That kind of isolation is one of the heaviest things a person can carry. The Psalmist knew this feeling too, praying, turn to me and be gracious, for I am lonely and afflicted. If you have ever felt like an outsider, you are in good company in Scripture. And this is exactly the kind of ache Jesus moves toward, not away from.

Day 2: The Mirror That Cannot Heal

Galatians 3:24 | James 1:23–25

The law functions like a mirror. It can show you exactly what is wrong, down to the smallest detail, but it has no power to fix what it reveals. James describes a man who looks in a mirror and then walks away and forgets what he saw. The law's purpose was never to leave us staring at our own reflection. It was meant to turn us toward the one person who can actually reach in and heal what the mirror only exposes.

Day 3: Reaching for the Promise

Mark 5:27–29 | Malachi 4:2

She did not grab superstitiously at fabric. She reached for the fringe that represented God's covenant, believing the promise that healing would come. Malachi had prophesied that the Son of Righteousness would rise with healing in his wings. She staked everything on that promise being true in the person of Jesus. Faith is not confidence in your own effort. It is clinging to what God has already promised, even when your circumstances say otherwise.

Day 4: Seen and Not Just Healed

Mark 5:30–33 | Hebrews 4:15–16

Jesus stopped in the middle of an urgent situation to ask who had touched Him. He already knew. He wanted her to step forward and be seen, not to remain anonymous in the crowd even after her healing. Hebrews tells us we have a High Priest who sympathizes with our weakness. Jesus does not just fix the problem from a distance. He wants the relationship, the eye contact, the moment of being fully known.

Day 5: Daughter

Mark 5:34 | Romans 8:15–17

Of everything Jesus could have said to her, He chose the word daughter. Not a diagnosis. Not a category. A relationship. Paul writes that we did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. The gospel does not merely clean us up. It brings us all the way into the family, and it cost Jesus His own blood to say that word over each of us.