A Growing Faith Like Gideon's #1

*NOTE: This blog is a follow-up to my message on July 31, "Gideon: Faith That Grows." To understand the blog to its fullest, listen to the message first here.

"Lord, increase our faith!" was the request of the disciples in Luke 17. How does that happen? A look at the full context of this request (vs. 1-19) will show that there are at least three things God asks of us in order to grow our faith.

1. Use What you have (to do what you should)

It’s not the size of our faith that is most important, but the source on whom it is fixed. Even if we have just a little, it is powerful when placed in the solid character of God. Take the faith you have been given by God and simply start obeying him in the smallest areas. Look at what he has given you, and use it in faith to bless others and glorify his name. That’s how faith grows -- when we simply act on what we already know or take what we already have and put action to it. Being faithful in what we already have or to what we already know opens the door for greater faithfulness in larger things later.

In fact, a synonymous phrase for increasing  faith is quicker obedience. Let me illustrate. Two men both have to jump just a foot or two off a ledge and grab hold of a branch over a large canyon, then stand up on the limb below them. What will affect their readiness to jump the most? Not who they are, but what the tree is like. Little tree? Slow jump (if at all!) Big tree with firm roots? Quicker jump? You get the point, right? Even a little confidence in the tree can lead to a big jump. And for sure, delay indicates doubt. After all, it’s one thing to analyze; it’s another to be paralyzed. The common factor to both is the state of the tree.

Remember Peter? He was the first one out of the boat, indicating his faith in Jesus was strong. When did he start to sink? When he took his eyes off the source of his faith and onto the size of the waves. Don’t knock him for sinking. Applaud him for such strong faith that obeyed so quickly and showed he trusted Jesus without reservation.

Gideon did this, too, when he simply used what he had to obey what he knew. He took the ten men and cut down the idol his father had erected. While it was important, it didn’t require things out of his immediate reach. He started with what he had where he was. It was small faith that had a big impact.

Q & A from "By Faith" Series in Hebrews 11

Q: In your recent message on Abel you said that "God came to us." But didn’t we go to him and accept him on his terms?  He is always with us from the time that we are born to the time that we die, right? It is just that we have to accept him, right?

When I speak of God coming to us, I speak, first, of the crucial act of Jesus coming to live among us. God “pitching his tent” in our neighborhood (John 1). Had God not sent Jesus to live among us and die in our place as the atoning substitution for sin, we would forever be lost. We did not (and could not) go to God in heaven and try to reconcile the war between him and us, nor were we (or are we) able to bridge the gap that exists between us and God. It is an eternal predicament that only God can solve. He solved that when he took the step of sending Jesus to us as the sacrifice for our sins and not leaving us in our sin. This was the work of God in coming to us when we could not get to him.

Second, when I speak of God coming to us, I speak of the work of the Holy Spirit upon our lost souls when he opened our eyes to the Gospel (i.e., the truth about Jesus’ finished work on the cross). Ephesians 2 says we are dead; 2 Cor. 4 says our eyes were blinded. But God has shone the light of the Gospel into our hearts (2 Cor. 4:6) so that we could see. He has awakened our hearts from the dead and  given us the faith to believe (Eph. 2:8-9) So it was God who came to us in our lost state and raised us up/regenerated us. Yes, we responded to that and experienced conversion – that moment when we “accepted” the Gospel and took our stand on it. But it was God who came to us and opened our eyes, giving us the spiritual capacity to even see/comprehend the Gospel.

When we speak of God always being with us, we need to be careful to distinguish between God being always with us and God being in us. God is “with” everyone in the sense that he is always aware of where they are and in control of them – lost and saved people alike. He is sovereign! Omniscient and omnipresent! But he chooses to reside in those who believe. This is the role of the Holy Spirit – to indwell believers. This is the presence of God that unbelievers do not have. It is God coming to us in a way that lost people cannot access until they believe.


Q: You also stated that, when it comes to the show of church, "nobody is flasher then us."  What did you mean and why is that so? Is it because we want people to think we’re a “goodie two shoes” bunch?
By “us” I meant, generally, the western American church, and I don’t know why we have this tendency to impress. I don’t think it is wrong to want to put our best foot forward, but there is a fine line between our best foot forward and a false foot forward. Perhaps we do crave the approval of others too much, so we want them to think we’re something we’re not. I’m not sure if I know the WHY question. But I am fully aware of my own failings and tendencies to cover up any sign of weakness or fault, and God warns against that seriously. Perhaps riches and prosperity have trapped us into thinking that we have to at least appear to have it all, all the time. I just don’t know. But I do know this is the battle we all wage: pretense vs. authenticity.