Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
The apostles said to the Lord, “Show us how to increase our faith.”
The Lord answered, “If you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘May you be uprooted and thrown into the sea,’ and it would obey you!”
Luke 17:5-6 (NLT)Thomas: “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, and place my fingers [there] and my hand into His side, I will never believe…”
Lord: “He said to Thomas “Put your finger here, and see my hands and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
John 20:25-27 (ESV)
From that first passage above and that moment with his twelve Apostles, we see that the Lord asked them, as He asks us, to have faith.
Faith in His promises.
Faith in everything He says and does.
Faith that He has a plan and purpose for your life and mine.
Faith in Him.
Faith in all of that, at all times—even when we don’t know how.
He asks us to believe without doubting, as written in James 1:6. To ask, to seek until we find, to knock because the door will be opened, as recorded in Matthew 7:7-8. To pray without ceasing, written in I Thessalonians 5:16. Simply believing that what we ask for, seek, knock and pray for—He will do something about.
But He also knows that we sometimes have a hard time believing. Having faith. Trying to wrap our limited, finite brains around what our infinite all-knowing, all-powerful God says and does. Sometimes like Thomas, we need to see it to believe it, and can’t seem to believe it on faith alone.
In the second passage above from the Gospel of John we see a moment of dialogue between Christ and the Apostle Thomas. It’s where Thomas was later tagged with the nickname of “Doubting Thomas.”
But that nickname is ours, because we’ve all been where Thomas was, where we begin to doubt, faith wanes—and we need to find a way to believe in the face of everything around us causing us to doubt. We need faith to be able to run to the finish. We’ve all had those days where Thomas was—“Show me, Lord, I need to see your hands.”
There are days when we want to believe in His promises, His presence—but we’d like to see the nail holes and personally hear His voice of quiet assurance; or maybe even a loud booming voice of clear authority and direction. There are days when we just seem to need a little more visible proof to go with the usual dose of faith that we can muster up.
There are days when we’ve lost a big game. A day when someone near us has been fired or we wondered if we would be. Days where we’ve been questioned—our integrity challenged, or we are wondering where the next step, the next door is for us. Days when we’ve lost a loved one, and no reason seems good enough to explain why.
And some of those days can shake us to the core. And we want to believe, we need to believe. But we don’t, we can’t. Remember though, my friends, that the disciples had their moments of doubt, despite Jesus standing right there before them, and despite witnessing all He had done. So I suppose we shouldn’t feel so bad, or guilty, when we have our moments of doubt.
Because we will and we still do.
But Christ tells us, as we read in that first passage of scripture above from the Gospel of Luke—“if you have faith even as small as a mustard seed”—it’s enough.
Jesus told the disciples—as He tells us—embrace whatever faith you have—even as small as a mustard seed—and hang on, hold on—He’s got it from there. Whatever faith we have, embrace it, hang on, hold on—because it will be enough—because God’s got the rest.
Hang on to whatever faith you have, that’s all we need with Him—because He’ll take it home from there, and finish it with us and for us.
In His Name—Scott
