Faith

Yesterday, while I was reading some scripture in the Bible, I noticed something that I hadn't really noticed before. Well, I noticed it, but now I'm thinking this particular scripture in a new way. It's from Luke 9, and the story is about a boy who was possessed by a demon. The disciples had been trying to get the demon out of the boy, but they weren't able to. Jesus came in, and seemed very disappointed in them because of their lack of faith.

This made me start thinking about my faith. Yesterday, my wife had a real bad headache and she was feeling sick all day long. I was praying for her and asking God to take her headache away. It seems like such a little thing for God to do. And the Bible says if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we should be able to tell mountains to get up and walk. So apparently, my faith is so microscopic that I can't even have God take away a headache. You would think that if God would have healed Suzy's headache, then that would raise my faith, which would make me bolder in my prayers.

But, Jesus says to the disciples a few times that they have such little faith. And these guys were with Jesus all the time. They saw the miracles. They heard all of his teachings first hand. Some of them saw him at the Transfiguration. They saw everything amazing that he did. And still, these guys had little faith. To me, it seems that even miracles may not raise somebody's faith. If God answered my prayers and healed Suzy of her headache, would my faith really be strengthened long term? If I saw God change a zebra from black and white to yellow and purple, would that strengthen my faith? I would think that if I saw God working that powerfully, then my faith would grow in leaps and bounds. But even the disciples' faith was described as too little.

I still want to think about this a little bit more. How do we build on our faith? How do we grow our faith to the size of a mustard seed? And maybe I shouldn't get so down on myself for having such little faith that even a headache won't go away. Because I also noticed yesterday that every time Jesus did a miracle at the beginning of his ministry, that he always told people not to tell everyone else (even though they always did). That never made any sense to me either. Why would Jesus not want people to know about his power. That would make more people believe, right? But Jesus' reason for coming was to tell people the good news of the kingdom of God. He was more focused on the truth of God, and didn't want people to focus on the miracles (which most did anyways). And even the people who saw the miracles turned against Jesus in the end. Miracles have a way of being explained or otherwise forgotten. Truth should be eternal. So, to build faith...maybe it will take learning the truth of God, more so than seeing a miracle of God. God seems to use miracles to grab attention, not to fix the problems of the Believers. He's got my attention...So what do I do with it.

I'm going to be thinking and learning more about what it means to have genuine faith.