“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
Faith is essential. We are saved by faith and live by faith. But faith is not an off-on switch, where you believe God or you don’t. When our Lord said, “Have faith in God” (Mk. 11:22), He was speaking to disciples who (with one exception) were already believers. After all, they believed in a prayer-hearing God. But would He grant their requests? “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (v. 24). Ay, there’s the rub! Believe? Yes! Receive? Did Jesus really mean that?
The Lord saw the evidence of great faith in a Lebanese woman who pled for table crumbs: “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire” (Mt. 15:28). Likewise He “marvelled” at a centurion’s faith, another Gentile: “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!…Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you” (Mt. 8:10-13).
In the midst of a storm, the disciples’ panicked minds surmised that the sleeping Savior could somehow perish and they with Him. He rebuked first them and then the storm, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Then He arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm” (Mt. 8:26). Seemingly Mark records an added comment after the storm: “The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And He said to them, Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith?” (Mk. 4:40). No faith?
On another occasion, it was broad daylight and on terra firma, not wet and wild. The question was, If God supervises the rest of the universe, including the desert grass which has a one-day lifespan, will He somehow overlook His children? (See Mt. 6:30.) Again, He measures such wobbly trust as “little faith.”
Once more on Galilee, the disciples thought they had seen a ghost one night. What follows seems to me to be a demonstration of gigantic faith. Peter asked the Lord for an invite to join Him on the sea, and, receiving His “Come,” stepped out onto the heaving surf. But, distracted by the storm, he began to sink and cried out for help. “Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand, and caught him, and said to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Mt. 14:31). The fact that our sympathies are with the fisherman may indicate that we too find a little boat a safer place somehow than the invitation of the One by whose word everything is upheld (Heb. 1:3). Why do I doubt Him?
One day, the disciples forgot to pack a lunch. Worried, though the Creator was standing beside them, their faith was prodded again: “O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves, because you have brought no bread?” (Mt. 16:8). Then He gave the reason: “Do you not…remember the five loaves of the five thousand and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up?” (vv. 9-10). Faith should be able to feed on the Lord’s past faithfulness, especially on His abounding largesse.
One day when the Lord was teaching, His disciples made the request, “Increase our faith” (Lk. 17:5). Good idea! Specifically, it had to do with enough faith to forgive others. But is it not the same faith that believes there is enough in the Cross to forgive me all my trespasses? Paul also states that our faith can increase (2 Cor. 10:15). Stephen and Barnabas were full of faith (Acts 6:5; 11:24). Some, like the Romans and Thessalonians, had such faith in God that it became word-of-mouth advertising for the gospel (Rom. 1:8; 1 Thess. 1:8). O for faith like that!
We know that faith is the Spirit’s fruit (Gal. 5:22) so obviously He can grow it in us as Christ is at home in our hearts (Eph. 3:17). We also know that our faith is purified through testing (1 Pet. 1:7) and that spiritual interaction with God’s people results in the furtherance and joy of our faith (Php. 1:25). We remember that faith works through love (Gal. 5:6) and is energized by reading the Word (Rom. 10:17). Yet surely, if faith is in God, that faith should grow as we grow in knowing Him. Not ideas about God, but God Himself. When we see God working in our everyday lives—wise, loving, thoughtful, generous—our faith should flourish. Increase our faith!