The Real Kind of Faith

I have more blessings than you can possible imagine! For someone as ungrateful and selfish as I am, it is truly amazing how faithful God is to give me so much to enjoy. I have close friends to share in mutual encouragement with, and people older and younger than me that I can lead or follow in Christ. God lets me feel His presence in a deep way almost every morning. He regularly gives me the chance to worship Him, and stand or kneel or lay face down in awe and wonder at who He is, despite my personal lack of spiritual understanding. If my certainty of God's love was dependent just on my experience of His spiritual blessings, then I would have more than enough proof.

But here's the thing. I'm not okay with that. I don't want my understanding of God's love to depend on what I can see and touch and feel. Who God is is infinitely greater than my experience of who He is, because I am finite and very limited in my scope of vision.

In my Bible reading this morning, I got to revisit an example of what kind of person I want to be. In John 4, we read of a man who was in dire need. This man was an official in high position who lived in Capernaum. Whatever power this man may have felt he had, there was one circumstance in his life that he was powerless to deal with. His beloved son was sick and dying, and the official could literally do nothing about it. So this man went to the One who could do something.

When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to Him and asked Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

This man was acknowledging that he could do nothing for the one he cared about so deeply. His attitude was one of humility and desperation. Yet he was still not at the place Jesus wanted him to be. He was ready for a miracle from God, but faith in and desire for this miracle was not all that God wanted.

So Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”

The official had no problem believing that Jesus could do a miracle. His problem was believing in Jesus if He didn't do a miracle.

The official said to Him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.”

Now the official faced the dilemma that we all come to at some point or another. He had felt hopeful and confident on his journey to Jesus, as long as he expected that Jesus would come back with him. If the official could see Jesus lay hands on his son, that was more than enough. But now Jesus had done the unexpected. He refused to come back with the man. Instead, the official was to go home, alone, with no guarantee but a word from Jesus.

This is where our faith is tested. It is good to have a firm belief that Jesus is at work in your life. But as long as you are seeing His work clearly from day to day, your faith, though genuine, is still untested and unproven. When real faith comes into play is when you are asked to face a day with no certainty of Jesus showing His hand. Without any clear sign that He is near, armed with nothing but the ancient promises of His word, you are asked to “Go.” Go back home. He won't show you a sign. He won't give you a blessing or a token of His involvement in His life. Just walk back the way you came, by yourself, and believe not in what you will see when you get there, but in the One who sent you.

The man believed that word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.

As he was going down his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” The father knew that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household.

Sometimes Jesus wants us to do more than just believe He'll work. He wants us to believe in Him even when we aren't feeling His presence, or feeling used in others' lives, or feeling encouraged by the believers around us.

The official from Capernaum passed this test. By the time he got back to the servants who told him the good news, he had already proven he didn't need good news. He had gone to Jesus, left Jesus, traveled for two days and probably even slept a whole night—all without any knowledge of his son's state. But a word from Jesus had been enough to sustain him, because he trusted in who Jesus was.

How I want to be like this man! Sometimes I think that the only faith I've been proven to have is the kind that is instantly rewarded and rarely tested. Who's to say that my faith in God has what it takes, if it might just be dependent on the blessings I'm used to receiving?

But my prayer and my hope is that God has given me a better faith. Who He is is more than enough. And if today I lose some blessing I thought I needed, I hope I can keep His character in view and, like the the man from Capernaum, “Go.”