11/30/20 Chris (see HERE)
“Just have faith” they say.
“You just have to believe”
It sounds good enough.
After all, doesn’t the Bible say somewhere that all you need is faith
the size of a mustard seed and your dreams can come true?
But is a mustard seed faith really enough? What does that even mean?
A lot of people describe their spiritual journey as
alternating between times of doubt and times of faith, kind of like changes in
the weather. That’s how it was described
by a man named Chris, during a brief conversation at a bus stop. As a result, he said. “I do have faith, I
just don’t get all gung ho about it!”
I wonder if Chris has something in common with Jesus’
disciples, who struggled with the same roller coaster of doubt and faith. Once, after trying to heal a boy of seizures,
they asked Jesus for help. After Jesus
healed the boy, they asked why they couldn’t do it themselves. He replied, “Because you have so little
faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can
say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Another time, after hearing Jesus teaching about the
importance of forgiving even those who continually wrong us, these same
disciples said to the Lord “Increase our faith!”
Jesus replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard
seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’
and it will obey you.”
Now, moving mountains and transplanting whole trees are not exactly
everyday events, so it seems that Jesus was simply using hyperbole to
demonstrate the difference between those who live by faith and those who do
not. After all, only God can move
mountains, right?
But maybe there is another way to look at the possibilities
a mustard-seed size faith might bring.
Jesus went on to explain his mustard seed faith analogy with
a parable: “Suppose one of you has a
servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he
comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather
say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and
drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he
did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were
told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our
duty.’”
What? Why did Jesus
explain the power of faith, even a mustard seed faith, with this parable about servanthood?
I believe its because the AMOUNT of our faith isn’t what’s
important, but, rather, the OBJECT of our faith.
For Christians, Jesus is the object of our faith. And if he is truly the Lord of our lives,
then the point is not what WE want, but what HE wants, for in his parable
explaining faith, WE are the unworthy servants who are to do our duty, and that
rarely involves moving mountains or uprooting trees!
Maybe the reason we don’t move mountains simply by faith is
because God doesn’t need us to. He made
those mountains and put them there for a reason. Neither do we uproot trees and throw them
into the sea at a whim because the Lord planted them there for a reason. We may have great faith that he who made the
trees and the mountains CAN move them if he wants to, but the question lies
more in whether he WANTS to move them.
What this means is that the way to be people of faith is not
just to increase our amount of “faith” in general, but to get to know the
object of our faith better. When we seek
first the kingdom of heaven, we need to seek first the King. When we begin to put Jesus first in our
lives, we stop praying childish, self-centered, double-minded prayers, and the
mustard-seed faith we start with starts to become as powerful and trustworthy
as the One we put that faith in.
“Just have faith’ is too often just a tired religious
platitude. It needs an object – Jesus,
and a purpose – to serve him. And as His
servants we are assured in 1 Timothy 3:13 that “Those who have served well gain
an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith in Christ Jesus.”
Thanks, Chris, for allowing me to record our
conversation. It can be seen on my
YouTube channel. https://youtu.be/FK7UqMMFgPU
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