Good
Morning All!!
Luke 17:6; “And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you
could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it
would obey you.”
We spend a lot of time talking about faith in our confirmation
class. The kids have a ton of
questions. By this age, they have heard
about faith often in their lessons. The
word faith appears over 400 times in the Bible.
It is the essential element of our teachings. So when I ask our students, “do you have
faith?” I get a resounding yes. So then
I ask, “What is it? If you were to
explain it to a classmate, how would you explain it?” It usually gets a little quiet.
We use the working definition of faith as “the desire to trust in God’s
promises.” God has made promises to all
of mankind. Jesus died for everyone; yet
only those who believe in the reconciliation and the restoring of this event can
truly benefit from this event. In order
to benefit from it, we need faith. Faith
leads us to trust in God’s promise.
Faith tells us that this is the way to peace.
Faith is interesting because it is not innate to the human species. We rarely trust in anything and we rarely
have faith in things. We usually need to
see it. (Remember Thomas and having to
touch the side of Jesus to believe he was alive.) Seeing is believing is the motto of many
people. If I can touch it then it is
real. This usually comes about because
others have made promises to us and failed.
From the promise of the perfect toy for Christmas as a child that didn’t
show up to the promise to love us forever that falls by the wayside, we have
promises made and broken. We tend to
doubt, but that is where Jesus comes in.
When we doubt, he shows us his hands and side and says “trust.”
Faith, trusting in God’s promises, gives us the comfort and the hope to
reach beyond what we can see and control.
Faith tells us that God is in control, even when we don’t see it. Faith is trusting that God’s love for us
defeats all enemies. Faith gives us the
confidence to rest and to have peace.
When you do not have faith, all the issues of life will cause sleepless
nights. All the issues of life will
deprive you of the comfort of the peace that we have with God. Peace we can access because of faith; faith
that trusts in God to keep all of his promises.
As we see in our verse, it takes very little faith to accomplish great
things. This is why we always ask God to
increase our faith. The greater our
faith, the greater our comfort and our certainty of the hope that God gives us;
a faith that clings to God’s promises for all that we need. Faith, trusting in God to keep his promises,
will give you peace and hope.
Father
of all mercy, strengthen our faith that we might always trust in your
Word. Give us the certainty of your
mercy and grace. Give us the comfort of
your love that we may know your peace.
Guide us through the challenges of life that we may always keep our hope
in you. In the precious name of Jesus we
pray, amen.
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret
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