The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"(Luke 17:5 – ESV)
Today I want you to begin to know Jesus more fully, to understand what He is all about a little more clearly. Today I want to begin to increase your faith. It isn’t about applying heavenly power to those things that we want just as much as the world does, and getting them because we are on God’s side. It is about looking at God and to God and for God to give us things that only He can give us, change things that only He can change, not change things that worldly wealth or wisdom could change if we had them. No, He is about giving us things others don’t want, don’t see, and have no desire to be changed by.
Jesus is the Way out of things others don’t even have a problem with because they don’t see them as a problem. Looking at Jesus’ agenda and adopting it and applying it to our lives are how we can have an increasing faith. The eyes of faith are not, “God is going to give me what I want”, but “thank God He is God, and He will change me to do what is right, and think of Him as enough”. He will fulfill our temporal needs, yes, but He keeps on fulfilling our greatest need, for more of Him. Now actually it is not more of Him, since we are complete in Him (Colossians 2:10), it is just less of ourselves. The first step to an increasing faith is to see what we need it for, so that we can do things unbelievers cannot do, not works of power, but works of Presence.
Why do we need an increasing faith? Looking at Luke 17:1-4 we can see why. Temptation and frustration – we need faith to be longsuffering, to bear with one another. This is the difficult task. People will set traps, woe to those people, indeed, but it will happen, so be on the lookout. You leave it up to God; He will deal with them. You watch yourself, and you warn others, but let God deal out the judgment on them. All of that takes faith.
Real forgiveness can’t happen until there is repentance, but we are not permitted to judge another’s repentance if they repent to us. If someone had sinned against me seven times in a day, in other words, they kept on and on, and kept asking me to forgive them, I might think that they were not really sincere. Yet Jesus commands me to still forgive them. Great faith is needed to get along with people like this.
What is faith for? It is for enduring and engaging despite what happens. Look at Hebrews 11; it is not faith for stuff but faith in spite of stuff NOT happening, like these persons who keep frustrating us. Increasing temptation and frustration takes increasing faith to deal with. Once we understand this, then we can see what Jesus shows us in this text about doing that. More to come…
5 comments:
...What is faith for? It is for enduring and engaging despite what happens. Look at Hebrews 11; it is not faith for stuff but faith in spite of stuff NOT happening,..."
AMEN! You're helping us to "swerve" back on "the path"....thanks.
"The first step to an increasing faith is to see what we need it for, so that we can do things unbelievers cannot do, not works of power, but works of Presence."
I tell you, there's always good stuff to chew on over here. Go on and preach it! I am so looking forward to more about faith.
Seems like such a basic / elementary principle, but yet.....not.
Thanks Craver and Chris, and yes, I am thankful you guys and hopefully all of our visitors get something over here at Voice...I am very much looking forward to next week's posts on faith as well...stay tuned... and God bless...
I needed this today. The temptation and frustration that the world throws at me is making me doubt that I am capable of crossing the finish line apart from God Himself ushering me across. I really feel that weakness right now. Despite how painful being poor in spirit is before God, despite how painful it is to lump humility on TOP of the strain of temptation and frustration, this is the course to take. So thanks for the encouragement.
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