I’m currently reading the book of Matthew. Our pastor has started a new series in this book and asked that we read it from beginning to end. My prayer prior to beginning this was that God would give me a fresh word…let me see something that I have not seen before. So I began…
Chapter 1-2: Birth of Christ; Chapter 3: John the Baptist; Chapter 4: Jesus is Tempted…and so on.
Then I got to Chapter 9…specifically verses 27-30.
Two blind men begin following Jesus. They are crying out for mercy. They needed healing. Jesus turns to them and asks: “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” For some reason, this just made me stop and think. Jesus did not ask them what they had done to deserve healing. He did not ask what they would do for Him if He healed them. He did not ask them if they would be His followers after the healing took place. His question to them was simple…”Do you believe that I can do what you are asking?”
Then Jesus said something else that made me pause: “According to your faith, let it be to you.” Talk about a test of faith. Their healing was directly linked to their faith in Jesus’ ability and willingness to heal them.
I guess this story stood out to me because of my recent rededication to prayer. What if these men had approached Jesus hoping that He could heal them? What if they had tried everything else, heard about this man and thought they would just give Him a try? What if they asked for healing, believed He could, but doubted that Jesus would actually do it? I believe they would have walked away blind.
Faith is believing in the power of God…that He is able to do abundantly more than anything we could think or ask. Faith is also believing in the compassion and kindness of God…that He wants good things for us.
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Things I took away from this story:
- God wants us to believe that He is able to handle our problems; heal our sicknesses; answer our prayers
- God’s mercy has nothing to do with our worthiness
- God wants us to believe that, not only can He do these things, but that He will
Wow that was good. Like you, I’ve always known that God is capable of doing whatever he wants to do. But for some reason, I’ve just been cynical of the notion that he would do something big through me. Just recently, I’ve come to understand that. With our current “biggie” I’ve prayed, as you know, for God to do something that I couldn’t possibly take credit for. Soemthing so big that its just blatantly obvious that it was God and he alone gets the glory for what happens. We’ve talked about the e-sword.net story. I want it to be like that.
Wow. Thanks for that post.
The paragraph where you have the “What If’s” really bothers (speaks to) me. I am afraid that while I know He can do anything, I come to Him doubting. I don’t know how people ever really move past that. I guess I feel like I don’t always know how the circumstances will turn out, but I know His character, which never changes, so I trust Him in that. Good post.