Do I have enough faith? Am I confident enough that the Lord
will answer my prayers? Will my doubts prevent me from receiving anything from
the Lord?
These are just a few of the many doubts that plague us.
However, we are in good company. The Psalmist, King David, also doubted the
Lord:
- In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” (Psalm 31:24)
David had given up on the Lord. But
this wasn’t the end of the story:
- …Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help. (31:24)
Our deliverance doesn’t depend upon
us – the level of our faith, confidence, assurance, or anything else about
ourselves. It depends on God alone! Despite David’s lapse of faith, God “heard”
and delivered him.
What a relief that we do not have
to continually scrutinize ourselves – our degree of faith or doubt! Although we
have to examine ourselves regarding sin, we do not have to obsess about whether
we have enough faith.
Jesus’ disciples had obsessed about
this. They thought that faith was a matter of quantity, and they wanted more of
it. They asked their Lord to increase their faith (Luke 17:5).
However, Jesus explained that it
wasn’t a matter of quantity. Instead, if they had the smallest measure of faith, they could move mountains and mulberry
trees!
Rather, faith was a matter of
quality. The disciples had to understand
that they couldn’t earn anything from the Lord - not blessings, not even a
“thank you.” They couldn’t place faith in their own merit or worthiness or even
in the level of their faith. They all
were, at best, “unworthy” servants. Consequently, their faith could only rest
in the mercy of the Lord (Luke 17:6-10) – not in themselves. According to
Jesus, this understanding was equivalent to great faith.
Why does God demand a faith that is
exclusively invested in Him? I think that there are many reasons for this.
Anything else would make us arrogant (Eph. 2:8-9; 1 Cor. 1:29). Besides,
realizing that he was utterly unworthy of God, David loved Him all the more for
His mercy:
·
Praise be to the
Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a
city under siege. In my alarm I
said, “I
am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to
you for help. Love the Lord, all his faithful people! The Lord preserves those who are true to him, but the proud he
pays back in full. Be strong
and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.
(Psalm 31:21-24)
Had David instead exercised flawless faith, he might have
convinced himself that God had delivered him because his faith in God had made
him worthy of God’s deliverance. Instead, David realized how faithful God had been to him despite his own faithlessness.
Rather than loving himself, David exulted in the “wonders of His love.” God
allows us to be weak and needy so that we too might so exult.
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