Faith Movers
Who is Jesus angry with?
When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him." Jesus answered, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me." And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" He said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." - Matt. 17:14-21
Perhaps Jesus thought his ministry would be different.
The key ingredient missing from this generation is faith. You would think that would be easier to restore.
He tells them, and through them, us, that it takes very little faith to move mountains, and yet, can we do what he says?
They had tried to cure a man of his disease and they couldn't. We can relate to that, right? How often have we tried to cast out disease from someone we love, calling on Jesus and it doesn't happen.
We blame ourselves for not having enough faith. Is that fair?
On the other hand, we venture out with little or no support, to do God's work, and suddenly support comes. Isn't that an example of moving out with faith?
For some things, like disease, we have to trust the doctors. We have faith in them, and we pray that God will guide them. Aren't we right in doing that?
Maybe the key then is to help those doctors have more faith in God to help them be successful. That is hard to do. They have seen the patterns and know what will happen as a disease progresses.
So, maybe we are stuck. We want to have the faith Jesus talks about, but we don't want someone we love to suffer and not get treatment while we pray for God's help.
I guess we need to keep trying our faith until we get it right.
More to come...