GFT #11b - Final Thoughts - Acquiring Faith

“Have faith in God…” Mk 11:22

So how do you acquire great faith? Some verses indicate that faith comes from God and other verses make it sound like it is our responsibility. Jesus is the “author and perfecter of faith”. One of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in I Cor 12 is faith. Yet “faith comes from hearing the message.” Jesus tells the disciples “Have faith in God”. Jesus groans when people have little faith as if it is within their grasp to have greater faith. One could make the mistake of taking one side of these dual truths at the exclusion of the other and end up being in error.

My guess is that someone like the centurion was rather matter of fact in his observations and resulting thoughts. He heard that Jesus was healing the sick and casting out demons and without a great amount of intellect involved concluded that Jesus was someone of enormous authority. He was so convinced of this that he would not even have Jesus come to his house or according to one of the gospel accounts speak directly with Jesus. His respect for Jesus was enormous. It wasn’t built on a lot of experience just some simple thinking and some conclusions about who Jesus was. In the background of all of this simple thinking, the Holy Spirit was at work in the Centurion’s life and enabling him to believe.

My intuition tells me that having faith…great faith…is much simpler than we would like to make it. We tend to complicate it because of the lack of it in our lives and we somehow need to address the dichotomy between the multitude of Scriptures that speak of the mighty things that can be done through faith and our human experience which is often void of the reality of “mighty things” promised. Like the disciples, we probably need to go to Jesus in a private moment and ask “Why couldn’t we cast out the demon?” Jesus answer will likely be the same “Because you have little faith.”

These are not guilt words designed to motivate you to pursue great faith….rather, these are powerful truths containing incredible potential that should energize you to pursue great faith.