{"id":4756,"date":"2013-11-23T00:05:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T08:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=4756"},"modified":"2013-11-22T18:16:35","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T02:16:35","slug":"faith-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2013\/11\/23\/faith-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

When they reached the crowd, a man approached and knelt down before Him. \u201cLord,\u201d he said, \u201chave mercy on my son, because he has seizures and suffers severely. He often falls into the fire and often into the water. I brought him to Your disciples, but they couldn\u2019t heal him.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tJesus replied, \u201cYou unbelieving and rebellious generation! How long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.\u201d Then Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and from that moment the boy was healed. <\/p>\n

\tThen the disciples approached Jesus privately and said, \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t we drive it out?\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\u201cBecause of your little faith,\u201d He told them. \u201cFor I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, \u2018Move from here to there,\u2019 and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting.\u201d (Matthew 17:14-21)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tThere\u2019s a lot less to faith than we imagine. A mustard seed is a rather tiny thing, barely an eighth of an inch around. But a mustard plant grows to become anywhere from two to nearly five feet tall, huge compared to crops like wheat or barley. Jesus told his disciples that if they had faith as small as a mustard seed, then they could even tell a mountain to relocate itself.<\/p>\n

\tBut before that, he had berated his disciples because they had \u201clittle faith.\u201d Jesus said you don\u2019t need much, but it apparently was possible to have less than enough. How tiny must the disciple\u2019s faith have been, then?<\/p>\n

\tAnd what is faith, anyhow? Simple trust. You trust your living room couch, because it\u2019s always worked up till now. It doesn\u2019t take much to trust your couch. You don\u2019t agonize over it, you just sit. <\/p>\n

\tGod had taken care of his people for thousands of years, starting with Abraham. His disciples had witnessed Jesus perform some rather amazing things. And yet their trust just wasn\u2019t there. They didn\u2019t approach the removal of the demon from the child like they would sitting down in a chair. They entertained the thought that it might not work. That\u2019s how tiny their faith was. So tiny it wasn\u2019t really there at all.<\/p>\n

\tBy little faith, Jesus means any faith at all. Or at least an admittance that we don\u2019t really believe. Confession works, too.<\/p>\n

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When they reached the crowd, a man approached and knelt down before Him. \u201cLord,\u201d he said, \u201chave mercy on my son, because he has seizures and suffers severely. He often falls into the fire and often into the water. I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4757,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756\/revisions\/4757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}