The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you.’” vss. 5-6
Luke 17:5-6
On the surface the demand sounds reasonable. It’s the sort of thing we might have said to Jesus–it might even be the core of our daily prayers: “Lord, increase our faith!” Often we imagine that our spiritual lives could be so much better if only our faith were stronger. We might even think that our prayers of intercession could be more powerful if we had more faith. That’s often implied by religious folks when they say that answered prayers come in direct proportion to the strength of our faith. While that sounds pious, in reality such a notion is enormously destructive to the health of our spirits. Jesus told the apostles that such ideas were nonsense, and that the smallest amount of faith is all we’ll ever need. Either we have it or we don’t! For those of us who actually have mustard-size faith this is really good news, especially when we’ve been hanging around people who love to talk about their macro faith and unshakeable convictions. We don’t have to take a back seat to anyone, ‘cause we’ve got the right stuff–we’ve got what it takes to join Jesus on his journey, and we don’t need anything more!
Thought for the Day: If we had macro faith what difference would it make?
0 Comments