Good Thursday morning, my friends.
Jesus calls us to do two basic things: Believe and Obey. Today I would like to talk a little about "believing".
When He calls us to believe, He is really calling us to have faith or more specifically to trust in Him and His power. Consider the story of Jesus and the centurion in Matthew 8:5-13:
The Faith of the Centurion
5 When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6 "Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly."
7 Jesus said to him, "Shall I come and heal him?"
8 The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, "Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11 I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
13 Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that moment.
Do you know that this is the only place in the Bible where Jesus was amazed at someone else? There are lots of places where others were amazed with what Jesus said and did, but nowhere else where Jesus is the one who is astounded!
So what is it that amazes Jesus? Well this centurion had 100 men under him who obeyed his every command. Why? Was it because he was bigger than all of them? Stronger? Smarter? No. They obeyed him because of the power that the centurion represented - the power of Rome. However, this man recognized that as powerful as Rome was (and it was the without doubt the strongest worldly power of the time), Rome could do nothing to save his servant. But he had been watching Jesus and could see that not only did men obey Him, but diseases and demons as well! He recognized that Jesus represented a power even greater than Rome. He knew that Jesus had the power to heal his servant without even having met the servant.
That is the kind of faith that Jesus asks of us.
So how do we get that kind of faith? I don't have it, at least not yet. For me, though, the key is the passage immediately before Jesus' encounter with the centurion. In Matthew 8:1-4 Jesus comes upon a leper who says: "Master, if you want to, you can heal my body." Jesus does want to and so heals the man. I know that God can give me stronger faith. So I pray "Master, if You want to You can give me the faith of the centurion." And little by little He is answering that prayer. I desperately pray that your faith is increasing as well.
Grace and peace and stronger faith be yours,
Bruce
Father God, you know our hearts,
though we are always besieged by the spirit of doubt;
please cure us of our unbelief,
so that our faith may grow,
and we may become closer to You.
Amen.
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