“Your faith has made you whole.” Luke 17:19 NKJV.
Faith in God changes what now is and shapes what will be.
My thoughts and comments today are about “sincere faith.”
Faith is not complicated until you make it so. Life requires faith. Faith is simply the capacity to believe in something that you have not yet seen and may not yet understand or be able to explain.“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1 NKJV. You evidence a measure of faith in the most natural way every day.
I am typing on a wireless keyboard but have faith that when I do so it will accurately convey my typed thoughts expressed in words to the screen in front of me, storing them in memory by processes I neither understand nor could explain. When finished, I will copy these comments into a mailing program that will send it to readers in varying locations nationally and internationally, in just a matter of seconds. I fully expect that to happen. That is faith.
You have faith in people, even though you are occasionally disappointed by some. I would rather have faith and be disappointed occasionally than not to have faith in anyone any time. You have faith in a person you have never met when you give your credit card numbers for a purchase over the phone or Internet. You have faith every time you sit in a chair, never considering if it will safely support you, faith every time you mail an insurance check that the financially safety you paid for will be provided as mutually agreed.
Faith for some people seems to become mysterious and questionable only when God asks you to have faith in Him. Yet, faith is essential. Jesus said, “According to your faith, let it be to you . . [who] does not doubt in his heart . . without faith it is impossible to please God.” Matthew 9:29/Mark 11:23/Hebrews 11:6.
Jesus encountered ten lepers; all were healed; one was pronounced whole. Read Luke 17:12-19 NKJV. It could be that all were healed by Jesus’ power, but to the one who returned to give thanks Jesus said, “Your faith has made you whole.” Luke 17:19 NKJV. I would suggest that as wonderful as it is, healing is less than it could be until it results in wholeness and somehow, by a process I cannot explain, the wholeness he experienced was born out of the genuineness of his faith.
Faith is not something you think. Faith is something you do. A leper had to appear before a priest to be pronounced clean of this dreaded and destructive disease. The Bible says, “As they went [to show themselves to the priest], they were cleansed.” Real faith has to be “walked out.” You don’t think it; you do it! Walk steadfastly in your faith, grounded in the established Word of God and your assurance of His character. You never know which step of faith ultimately releases the victory already given in Heaven into the very real, practical arena of your everyday life.
Keep walking in faith and watching for victory. Faith in God is powerful, changing what now is and shaping what will be. Make sure that thanksgiving and praise accompany your walk of faith.
My prayer for you today is that your faith be simple and sincere.