Increase our faith

Luke 17:5

Faith is an exciting thing. When I was younger, I used to watch the television show “Bewitched.” I thought it was the coolest show. Samantha, not your ordinary evil witch, was married to Darrin. They had a daughter named Tabitha, who also had some magical powers. It was one of my favorite shows because I never knew what was going to happen next. If you watched the show, you always knew that Samantha would get into trouble on her own and then use her magic power to get her out of that same trouble. With the twitch of her nose, she would appear, disappear, make light switches turn on and off, cause people to freeze in time, and even clean up rooms with the swoop of her arms. 

Can you imagine how clean my room would have been in high school if I could swoop my arms and the whole place was clean?

In my middle and high school minds, this was faith. If I only had enough faith, I could make things disappear, turn on the lights, and even wish into existence a beautiful and brand new Mustang. I was sadly mistaken. Faith was not some magic, but rather a conscious belief in someone much greater than myself who always had His best interest for me.

 

Understanding your lack of faith

Jesus’ disciples lived an interesting life. They saw so many people healed of various diseases by the miraculous works of Jesus. But they began to question their faith. To me, this is a fascinating part of Scripture because you would think that the disciples had great faith in the one who did so much for so many. But they did not. 

I’m not sure what they were looking for, but it wasn’t there. The disciples realized something was missing in their lives. Maybe they were jealous of those people Jesus mentioned as having “great faith.” Perhaps they understood the faith they saw in others was not present in their own lives. Either way, they perceived their faith needed some work.

Seeking a greater faith

The disciples did have faith, but it didn’t seem to match the faith of people who Jesus healed. Imagine a group of Jesus’ closest followers not having the same kind of faith seen in others. You would think the disciples had the most faith. But this was not so. They struggled just like you and I do every day. 

So they asked the One who could help them. They asked Jesus. He told them that if they had “faith like a grain of mustard seed, (they) could say to a mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (Luke 17:5-6). Does that seem like a tremendous amount of faith to you?

It tells me that faith in it’s smallest amount still can change things. In a way, I feel like Jesus was saying to the disciples that they had no faith at all. But, this couldn’t be true, could it? Maybe Jesus was saying that the disciples needed to exercise the faith they had. 

Either way, the disciples must have understood that even a simple and small faith was a powerful thing in a person’s life. It does two things.

First, it is a faith that saves a person (Romans 3:23-26), and there is faith that helps a person live with joy and excitement while serving Jesus. I call this living faith. I don’t believe the disciples were looking for any nose-twitching and hand-swooping kinds of miracles in their lives but sought the joy they saw in others who came to Jesus. 

In fact, from what Jesus said, it takes simple and complete faith to make that difference.

So what about you? Do you desire more faith? Do you yearn for that joy Jesus promises to those who follow Him? From this passage, it seems simple. Exercise your living faith to experience great days ahead, even in the midst of what seems like unending difficult times.