What are your favourite stories in the bible? Stories that moved you and excited you? Stories that made you wonder about the possibilities. Who are the hero’s you love to read or hear about? David and Goliath? It is probably the most popular and familiar story. A little scrawny guy with rocks in his pockets who stands against the giant. Maybe it is Daniel in the lions den, or Jonah and the whale. Maybe it is Moses and the splitting of the Red Sea. There is the story of Elijah and his defeat of the prophets of Baal. Maybe it is the story of Paul and Silas locked up in prison where God shook the whole jail and set everyone free while they prayed and worshiped.
The bible is full of stories where people saw great and powerful miracles done by a great and awesome God. Stories about men and women of faith whom God powerfully used. Stories that move us and cause us to desire the same, ‘God powerfully move through me’. As Christians we want to see people healed and set free, and see lives transformed. And when it doesn’t happen we can sometimes think the problem is we are lacking faith. Most of us have heard people teach or talk about faith, and we have read the scriptures where Jesus teaches on faith like “According to your faith be it done to you.” Matthew 9:29 ESV
Faith is something that is very necessary in our lives and walk with God because without faith it is impossible to please Him, but if you asked most Christians about their faith level, most would be fairly discouraged. We have many Christians who read the scriptures of Jesus telling His disciples that they had “little faith” and think that applies to them. Then we read where Jesus said we only had to have faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains, and we feel lower still. A mustard seed is pretty small, and if that is all it takes to move mountains then our faith must be pretty small then because we can’t seem to move a cold, let alone a mountain. Or that’s how many followers of Christ feel. At times in my walk with God I have wondered “Just how small must my faith be?”
“If only I had more faith” is a thought many of us have had. I would pray for people, usually with little to no effect, or at least not one I could see. And I wondered, why did things happen when people in scripture prayed, and not much seems to happen when I pray. I know I’m not alone in my wondering. Many other disciples before me have wondered similar things. People like Charles Spurgeon, CS Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and AW Tozer. And many others after me will wonder as well. Even the disciples of Jesus had questions like this. At one point the disciples tried to cast out a demon for hours with no success at all. Jesus came along and cast it out with a word. And afterwards the disciples went to Jesus
[MAR 9:28] His disciples began questioning Him privately, “Why could we not drive it out?”
As I have pondered on this question I felt like I was looking in the wrong place for my answer. I began to feel like the source of my problem wasn’t in how little faith I may feel I have, but more in where I had my faith placed. God began speaking to my heart and I began to understand that the size of my faith is totally unimportant if the size of my God was wrong.
A great faith in a small God will yield little to no results, A small faith in a great God will yield the miraculous
So the question I began asking myself is How Big is Your God?
The Blog of Tom Sanders 