“And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.”
Mark 11:22
As some of you know, my family and I are dealing with some very difficult things these days. At our wits’ end, we decided to do as a last resort what we should have done as a first resort, namely, we prayed! The miraculous answer came later the same day. My dad was positively dumbfounded. “All we did was say a small prayer,” he said. “Yes dad,” I replied, “we said a small prayer to a very huge God!” It was not our prayers or even the faith behind those prayers that was the source of our provision. It was the Divine Object of our faith and the One to Whom we prayed that made all the difference. A person can have all the faith in the world that a thin layer of ice covering a river or lake will hold him up. His faith alone, however, will not prevent the ice from breaking and his taking a very chilly bath! On the other hand, a person may exercise very weak faith in a very thick layer of ice. Despite the weakness of his faith—barely enough to cause him to gingerly venture out across the frozen lake—the object of his faith will nevertheless provide him safe passage to the other side. We see this kind of thing illustrated in the Bible. The prophets of Baal in the days of Elijah exercised tremendous faith in their god (1 Kings 18:26-29). They sacrificed and made prayers to him all day long. They even began cutting themselves in order to gain sympathy from their apparently reluctant god. Their strong faith helped them nothing because the object of their faith turned out not to exist (a real obstacle to getting anything done!). For the Christian, things are much different. A Christian’s faith may wax and wane depending on circumstances, but the object of his faith, the unchanging God of the Bible, remains faithful, reliable, dependable. Hear the encouraging words of our Lord: “Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20). The Lord’s words to a desperate father apply to us all: “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23). May we believe and obey the counsel of holy men, moved by the Spirit of God (2 Peter 1:20-21), who instructed us to turn from the world’s useless idols (1 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 John 5:21) and instead place our full confidence in “the Father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name,” promised Jesus, “that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13-14). May we re-enter our prayer lives with renewed enthusiasm today, knowing that He Who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23)
God bless,
Pastor John
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