644 Paramus Road, Paramus, NJ 07652

Showing Great Faith – By Father Andrew Bahhi

August 01, 2021
in The Word
No Comments
508

We all go through trespasses, temptations, hard times, and the hardest time of all is when our faith is tested, and we face hardship.

Today, we learn from another one of the times the disciples were with Christ. Luke 17. And Christ was saying, if you have faith like a mustard seed, which is very small, you can move mountains. But then they asked, “Lord, increase our faith.”

We all need to say this. This is the key to a good Christian life. This is the source of the strength that we all have as Christians. Like a doctor, patients call him only when there is trouble or pain. And a lot of times, our faith is also on call. When we face trouble, we pick up the phone and we call our savior.

A lot of us, unfortunately, treat God like a doctor. And there is no true relationship in Him.

Faith is different from belief. Belief is you have it or you don’t. But faith is a mustard seed, it starts small. If you want to be saved, your faith will grow slowly until your faith will make you saved.

But the faith the disciples were asking Jesus for was about trouble, temptation, persecution, and they were asking him, can you please increase our faith in you, so we don’t go back in time, and we face hardship in our life?

If you want to know how much we all need strong faith, ju­st call anyone who suffers or is going through a hard time. Some people are lonely, have depression, or anxiety. And that’s a lot of trouble. You just call these people, and they will beg you to end the hard times in their lives.

The Bible is calling each one of us to have a different kind of medicine, which is to trust the Lord.

Can you tell me what the word faith means? It is when you trust something that you don’t see. This is the hardest part of faith. How can I believe in God when I have physical trouble and cannot see Him? But the savior says he will be without you all the years of your life, for the age of ages.

His name is Emmanuel, his name is the savior, his name is “God is saved” – just trust His love for us. That is why increasing our faith, we have to understand what the three ways the Bible means by this word.

  1. First, there’s the story of the disciples of the boat amid the storm. Meanwhile Jesus slept in the bottom of the boat, where they woke him up. And Jesus said, “Why are you so fearful? Why are you scared?” and “How is it that you have no faith?”
  2. The second kind of people are like those in the boat, when Jesus said “oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
  3. The third kind of faith – the story of The Canaanite woman. Jesus was witnessing the faith of the woman and said “Oh woman, great is your faith.”

No faith. Little faith. Great faith.

If you don’t have the “Great faith,” you cannot guarantee your space in the eternity, and your life will be up and down.

I’m scared that with a lot of us, our relationship with God will only be when we need Him.

I pray that all of us today will make a serious decision by repenting and opening our heart for the holy spirit, and call out “If I have no faith, or little faith, please increase my faith so I have a great faith.”

You may ask “How can I increase my faith?” There’s a lot of ways, but here are a few:

  1. We have to disconnect our heart from earthly things or material life. Don’t make the earthly needs #1 in your life. The heart cannot have 2 kings. Either your love for money or God.
  2. When we have testimonial, test the lord, repent to the Lord. Then we will experience who the Lord is. We will be trusting in the Lord, and He increase our faith.
  3. The Lord is always good, but how we see Him is different. Trusting the Lord is good will increase your faith.
  4. Know the Lord is always walking with us. Knowing he will always be with us and not forsake us.

Learn more in Father Andrew’s sermon video here.

share

Recommended Posts