Does your faith seem small? Take heart. Perhaps you just need to redirect it.
Consider Jesus’ statement below:
Then he touched their eyes and said, “Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. (Matthew. 9:29-30).
The obvious meaning of Jesus’ words is that faith sets the stage for the Lord to help us, and that unbelief keeps us from receiving from him what we need. The blind men in this narrative believed Jesus could heal them—and he did. Conversely, the residents of Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, did not believe in him—and no great miracles happened there.
What is not so obvious is that both the blind men and the residents of Nazareth believed. The blind men believed Jesus was a prophet who had miracle-working power and Jesus’ hometown acquaintances believed he was a man like them so he couldn’t be a miracle worker.
Do we not all believe something, all of the time? And what we believe, what we really have faith in, greatly impacts our relationship with God and the outcome of our prayers. If I ask God for help, but remain anxious and uncertain, could it mean that I have greater faith in the problem than I do in God? In that case, Jesus’ words “According to your faith be it unto you.” (Matthew 9:29) seem to imply “Because of your faith that things will continue to be bad, that is what will happen.”
Is that not why the Scriptures urge us to do the kind of thinking that creates a climate for faith in God? For example:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (Philippians. 4:8).
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that
is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (Joshua 1:8).
But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. (Psalms 1:2 NLT).
In the vicinity of Nogales, Arizona, where my family moved when I was in high school, is a butte-like peak referred to as "Monkey Mountain." The front of it is a sheer vertical wall, so climbers have to hike around to the back of it. There, they can step from boulder to boulder, shimmy up crevices, pick their way gingerly along narrow ledges, and, finally, cross the narrow saddle connecting to the summit.
Even after my siblings and I grew up and moved to distant parts of the United States, we looked forward to making this climb when home for a visit. On one of the last such occasions, we parked the car at the Peña Blanca picnic grounds and began the trek toward Monkey Mountain. Although we were only a few hundred yards from the base of the mountain, our progress was slow because of the rocky ground and the trench-like depressions (probably dry arroyos, or stream beds) we had to cross. Amazingly, when down in the lowest part of these troughs, the view of the mountain was completely cut off. If one spent much time down there, one might even forget there was a mountain just a hundred yards away!
Problems always loom large. When we are sunk down in the middle of a challenging situation, these circumstances are all that we can see. God is much greater than our difficulty, but our view of him seems cut off. If we pray in that gloomy frame of mind, is that praying in faith? At such times, we have to purposely remind ourselves that God and his power, his love, and his solutions are still there—right over that pile of rocks.
Since our faith affects what will happen, let’s make a point of setting our expectation on God. Let's not allow ourselves to become trapped by faith in the wrong thing!
Celia Milslagle
