I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20
“Seeing is believing,” goes the old aphorism, yet from God’s point of view, the very opposite is true. Believing brings spiritual vision, which clears the brain of fuzzy negative thinking. I’ve been pondering the incident which took place as Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem, where He was about to die. Now, He knew this. A sense of urgency seemed to propel Him toward the Holy City. Jesus understood that what would take place in Jerusalem was to fulfill the very purpose for which He had come. What was about to happen was the main event of the ages. But as Jesus was leaving Jericho to take the road up to Jerusalem, He encountered a blind man—actually two of them—who cried out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When Jesus heard this, He stopped. From a social standpoint, they weren’t important. They really didn’t count, but they counted with Jesus.
He knew what they wanted, and He was prepared to give it to them. They had heard that He could heal the sick. “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” Jesus asked, and they replied, “Yes, Lord.” According to Matthew, who was an eyewitness, Jesus then touched them and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you!”
I’ve been thinking how often Jesus did things which were the opposite of human logic. The Jews placed a premium on conduct and action, Jesus placed it on belief. Furthermore, He tells someone who is blind to believe in something that they have heard about but never seen. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people had seen Christ perform at least one or more of the miracles which the New Testament writers tell us about, but they still had trouble believing. And Jesus tells blind men to believe!
Question: Why was it that two blind men, pretty much social outcasts, probably with some street-smart but no real education, were able to believe, when some of the real intellectuals of Jesus’s day stumbled over unbelief and came up empty-handed? But have I not answered my own question?
Faith in God does not negate using your brain, thinking for yourself, but it does operate in another plane or mode. It means switching languages, much like a computer operator who uses a program which operates on a different system. The system programs our brains to think, “God can’t do that! If He exists, He’s way out there somewhere in space, and He doesn’t care what happens to me!”
The question that Jesus asked is one that you must answer when you pray: “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” It’s just that simple.
Faith is simply believing what the Word tells you. It doesn’t attempt to understand how God does it. It just believes He will do it. For the intellectuals of Jesus’s day, that God would honor simple faith over action just didn’t make sense. From their point of view, God rewarded right living—deeds of mercy and justice—that sort of thing. Well, what’s wrong with that? Nothing in itself, but Jesus taught us that what God does is not a reward which He gives in recognition of the good things we do.
Paul made it so clear—he wrote, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).
How do you answer that question, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” And God responds, “According to your faith it will be done to you!” when you say, “Yes, Lord.” You know, friend, it’s still true today.
Resource Reading: Matthew 9:27-38
