It's Not So Much What Others Think, It's About What You Believe

 

[Repost with edit from Blog of December 9, 2009]

It's not so much what others think. it is more about what you believe. I was reading in the book of Matthew (Chapter 8).  A particular passage of scripture stuck with me, because it read true.  “Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee”, the verse read.

The preceding scriptures were a couple of parables that described how faith operates.  Basically, the requirement to make “faith” work is “belief”.   As I re-read the scriptures a few times, I was fascinated how easy it was for some people to believe just because they do.

One of the parables was about a centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant who was some distance away.  Jesus said okay, and had offered to go to the soldier’s house to heal his servant.

This is where the story gets interesting.  The centurion felt that he was unworthy of a visit from Jesus and requested that he “speak” the word only and felt that would be enough to heal the servant.  Amazing, right?  Or, was it?

The soldier went on to explain that he understood “authority” because in the military you have both someone to give you orders and, if you are in a leadership position, you can give orders to others.  It impressed Jesus that the soldier grasped the concept and parable goes on to say that, the servant was healed.

Today, although it is not quite the same, we sometimes use the same kind of authority in minor ways.  We order a pizza and expect it to arrive (without delay; and by a specified time).  Or, we call our children or friends on a cell phone and expect them to answer.

These things, we do, because we have built up a certain level of belief in what we have asked is going to happen because of prior successes in performing similar tasks.  We seldom ask anybody else their opinion about if they think the phone will ring if we dial, or if the pizza man is going to come if you call; we just believe because, we do.

What if, we had the same level of belief in God[Word]?  What if we believed that God would make it happen just like we believed pizza man would make it happen?  I believe.   Do you?