How Much Faith do I Need to be Healed?

“If he just had a little more faith I know he would be healed!”

She had great concern for her friend and his current health crisis, and she wasn’t the first one to lament the seemingly lack of faith in a loved one. 

“How much faith does one need to be healed?”, I asked. Her puzzled look told me she had not thought about that yet. So I went on, and it sounded something like this...

The Bible tells us that “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.” (Matthew 17:20b) Surely if such a minuscule amount of faith can move mountains it would be more than enough for anyone to be healed. 

But, just how much faith is a mustard seed faith? 

Mustard seed faith is the tiniest seed of a new found faith in God. It is the first utterance of a declaration that God is real and Jesus is your personal Saviour. It is the admittance that you believe in and belong to God’s family.

Her friend indeed was a child of God and had been for many years. We established he certainly had at least mustard seed-sized faith even if he had never grown in faith since he first prayed for God to be part of his life.

The problem with this notion that if we just had more faith all things would work out is that it is a self-defeating statement. It puts pressure on ourselves to rummage up enough faith to make things happen, and when they don’t we feel we have failed God. So we try other routes: more prayers, more good deeds, more tithing, more reading our Bibles...all great things...but when the desired outcome does not come we grow deeply discouraged. And not that moody-blue "I'm-having-a-bad-day" type of discouragement. We are talking about deep dissatisfaction to the core of our souls. We want to give up and question if God is even listening, or moreso, if he even exists. 

I had my friend open to the book of Job and read the very first verse: 

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. (Job 1:1 emphasis my own)

Blameless, upright, God-fearing, and he turned away from evil. This is a man of exemplary faith!  We could most certainly say that Job at least had faith the size of a mustard seed. Oddly enough, it did not keep Job in good health. In fact, this wealthy land owner was not only struck down in his own health, but experienced the death of his children, and the loss of his livelihood. It left Job wondering "why me?". A question we too often face when confronted with the painfully unexpected trials of life that seem to come wave upon wave.

While I can’t answer why, I do know this...

The only faith you need to have is enough faith to trust God has a plan even when the mountain does not move. Sometimes He needs us to faithfully start climbing instead of asking him to flatten the steep incline in front of us. 

Do not believe for one second that your future health and healing depend on you and your ability to muster up faith. You simply do not hold that kind of power. The hands that set the earth on its foundation are holding you as you go along no matter how grim it may appear in this moment. Maybe you will be healed, maybe not. The guarantee we long for does not exist this side of Heaven anyway. Our guarantee is the promise of eternal life through Jesus. With eyes fixed on eternity it makes any climb worth it. 

love,

photo credit: Markus Spiske @ unsplash.com

Lessons from the Highway

Not every moment is going to be easy, even when we walk it with God. There are no promises that everyday will be a smooth ride! Sometimes it's all to easy to become wrapped up in the all encompassing mess that is in front of us. Last week, while coming home from a road trip, I found myself being drawn into the tarred-up broken lines on the road. Below is a video to show you the metaphor I saw while driving that helps us to see above the broken road. 

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

                                                                                   ~ Jesus (Matthew 11:28)

Love,

Sarah

Living in Authentic Faith Even in the Midst of Pain

One quiet day when no one was home I found an old box in our basement. I had just read a story in The Good and Beautiful God of a professor who had his students beat up a box to prove a theological point. I’ll get to the point in second, but let me back up to tell you what happened the day I gave it a go. 

At first I was careful. I gently took a knife and punctured a hole through it. To my surprise tears flooded my eyes. I kept going being less and less gentle with this box. Each rip, each stomp represented something in my life that had changed who I was, something that hurt deeply. Each crumple and each hole was a painful memory from my past. I kicked the box around my kitchen awhile longer thankful that no one was around to watch the spectacle.

So what was the point?

I took my beat-up chunk of cardboard and went to my dark basement. I stuck a light inside the box and stood back to survey the damage. Shining into the darkness was the light that was inside the beaten up box. It occurred to me in that moment that where the most damage had been inflicted was the exact spot that the light could escape more easily and shine the furthest.

How often do we try to the cover the wounds and hurts from our own life? But here’s the thing...when you attempt to cover the rips, the wounds, and the imperfections life has left you on, you deny God the ability to shine through your weakness. 

Living as authentic Christians we don't get to claim we are perfect either in our words, our actions, or by what we keep concealed deep inside. 

You see, on our own, our lives are a dumpy piece of unusable cardboard. But, the moment we invite God to be part of our lives, he enters in and does what he does best. He takes our damaged lives and enters into a union with us so he can shine through our mess into the darkness around us. That's the Good News of our salvation!

There is nothing we can do in our own ability to cause God's hope to shine forth from us. We are not saved by our good deeds. We can only walk out our lives openly and vulnerably in a way that others can see that it is by what Christ has done for us that we find our value. 

We need to stop beating ourselves up to be better tomorrow, continually grasping at being a “perfect” Christian and falling short every time, until defeat swallows you up. It’s time to let perfection go, my friend. Neither you, nor I will make that mark on this side of heaven. 

Remember God’s promise to Paul though? He says that his power is made perfect in our weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9)  He understands we are weak, and imperfect. He weeps for us when we are crushed and damaged by the sin of this world. Then, His strength and power shine brightly out of our wounds and darkness loses the battle once again. 

I encourage you this week to let your guard down and allow God to shine through your weakness spreading hope to those around you.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Cor 4:6-9)