You heard me correctly! We Don’t Need More Faith!
“Wait a minute, Mark…Pastor John’s been telling us that 2023 is The Year Our Faith Takes Center Stage! I’ve got to increase my faith, to grow it! Faith’s like a muscle…you’ve got to work it! Pump it up! The more you work it, the bigger it gets!”
Uhhhhh…no.
Don’t get me wrong… this is the year our faith takes center stage. But the problem is that the devil has deceived some folks into thinking that they don’t have enough faith to accomplish the things that God has placed in their life to do and to live in the way God has created them to live!
Pastor John’s February 5, 2023 message really spelled it out. While I won’t go into the entire message, I will mention a couple things he said and then I challenge you to ask yourself, do you question sometimes if you need more faith?
Asking the question is wrong thinking because, as Pastor John says, it keeps your focus on trying to accumulate something that’s already been provided. How many times have you heard someone say, “You need more faith”? I agree with Pastor John that we don’t need more faith to get God to do anything for us.
The COMPLETED Work
When Jesus redeemed us on the Cross, he didn’t just do that partially. He didn’t say He’d forgive our sin but have to deal with our circumstances at some later date. He said on the Cross, “It is finished!” When we question whether we need more faith, it shifts the focus off of what Jesus DID COMPLETELY and puts it on “what I need to do to prove what Jesus did.”
Do you understand the difference here?
We don’t have to prove that Jesus did anything…it’s already been proven! It’s truth, and truth is truth whether you believe it or not. We’ve heard that “faith moves God.” But like Pastor John said, it’s not God that moves! He already moved through Jesus 2000 years ago! We shouldn’t be asking God to “move in my life!” He’s already moved! What we need to be asking for is a greater revelation of what that movement produced.
Sadly, the devil has turned faith into a works project for some: “If I pray and haven’t been healed or my family’s still a wreck, what do I need to do?” The wrong answer is, “Well, you just need more faith.” What’s that saying is that you don’t have enough faith – you have to accumulate to a certain level – for certain promises to happen.
We rate things, as if “by His stripes, we were healed” works at one level for a common cold and it’s a whole other level for an “incurable” cancer. But aren’t they both attacks on the promise of God’s Word? Remember, Jesus did the COMPLETED work; it’s not based on what we can do to make it happen. We need to get the understanding that it’s already happened.
More Faith? The Measure of Faith
“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” – ROMANS 12:3 (KJV)
Romans 12:3 is clear that we already have faith. God’s already provided it. You have faith within you because it’s part of how you were created. You were created in the image of God and God is a faith being. Faith is in you! As Pastor John shared, the faith in you was great enough to receive the greatest miracle (salvation) you’ll ever receive, if you’re born again…it was the hardest one to produce for us. Knowing that, why do we struggle to believe that God’s going to heal a headache?
Because we don’t always receive instantaneous relief, does that change the truth of what Jesus produced? No. As Jesus said more than once, only believe!
Great Faith and Little Faith
One thing Pastor John really clarified was scriptures that seemed to suggest levels of faith. He mentioned that the only times the Bible said that Jesus “marveled” was Matthew 8:8-10 (where He marveled at the great faith of the Roman centurion who took Jesus at His word), and when He marveled at the unbelief of people in His hometown of Nazareth (see Mark 6:1-6).
The centurion said, “Speak the word only and my servant will be healed.” Jesus told His disciples and the Jews around Him, “I haven’t seen such great faith in all of Israel!” More than God’s “chosen people”? Some people take those verses to mean that the centurion had a level of faith more than others; rather, it was whether they were persuaded or not of Jesus’ words. The centurion got it; the people of Nazareth were clueless!
They all had the measure of faith, but the centurion actually BELIEVED the spoken word of Jesus; he walked by faith and not by circumstances. He understood authority and therefore was persuaded that God would perform what He said.
On the other hand, the people of Nazareth were carnally-minded. They looked at Jesus – the fact that He had been a carpenter, Mary’s son, the brother of James, Joses, Judas and Simon and several sisters – and let those circumstances dissuade them that Jesus was who He said He was.
It wasn’t that they had different levels of faith…it was that they let circumstances – their natural senses – dictate their belief rather than God’s Word.
How about you?
We need to get off the never-ending treadmill of trying to obtain somethin from God that He’s already given. It’s not the amount of faith that’s the question; the question is, are you fully persuaded?
Watch the entire February 5, 2023 message on which this blog is based: CLICK HERE.
The message is part of the series: “2023: The Year Our Faith Takes Center Stage”. To hear other messages in the series, CLICK HERE.
