September 20, 2025 - Luke 17-19

The apostles to Jesus:  “Increase our faith!”  And Jesus then taught about the mustard seed.  Like the apostles, we might have often wanted to cry out, “Lord, increase my faith.”  It is so easy to go through a day, weeks, months, and just fall into the rut of doing stuff.  How wonderful it would be to see the power of God explode into a situation.  I remember standing before a large group in Niger once, telling the Bible story and focusing on the gospel.  At the end, we asked the group if we could pray for them.  One of my students prayed aloud, and I prayed silently along with the others.  There was an old man in the group, seemingly a highly revered elder, who was lame.  I found myself praying, with real expectation, that the Lord, like with the guy dropped down through the roof by his friends, would heal his legs and that he would jump up and walk.  I thought, “What a display of God's power that would be!”  I pleaded with God to do a miracle, but we left with the old man still sitting on his mat.

Here’s the thing.  Not only do we tend to fall into the everyday rut and commonplace happenings, but we ask for something big, and God does not do that.  And so, we cry out, “Lord, increase my faith!”  But that faith must not be focused merely on the miraculous; rather, it is faith in the Lord, that is, that he knows what he is doing, that he is wise, that he is accomplishing his good and perfect will.  Even in the face of nothing of particular note occurring, I still trust him.  It’s easy to “have faith” when something marvelous, and even miraculous, occurs.  The trick is to maintain faith even when God does not choose to act in such a way.  And so, “Lord, increase my faith!  No matter what the moment holds – an everyday, commonplace ministry opportunity or a great and marvelous sight – keep my eyes and my trust focused on you!"

Oh, for a faith that will not shrink

Though pressed by many a foe,

That will not tremble on the brink

Of poverty or woe:

It will not murmur nor complain

Beneath the chast'ning rod,

But in the hour of grief or pain

Can lean upon its God:

Lord, give me such a faith as this,

And then, whate’er may come,

I taste e’en now the hallowed bliss

Of an eternal home.   -- William Hiley Bathurst (1831)