Mark 11:22-24 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God.”
An elderly lady was well-known for her faith and for her boldness in talking about it. She would stand on her front porch and shout “PRAISE THE LORD!” Next door to her lived an atheist who would get so angry at her proclamations he would shout, “There ain’t no Lord!!” Hard times set in on the elderly lady, and she prayed for GOD to send her some assistance. She stood on her porch and shouted “PRAISE THE LORD. GOD, I NEED FOOD!! I AM HAVING A HARD TIME. PLEASE LORD, SEND ME SOME GROCERIES!!” The next morning the lady went out on her porch and noted a large bag of groceries and shouted, “PRAISE THE LORD. The neighbor jumped from behind a bush and said, “Aha! I told you there was no Lord. I bought those groceries, God didn’t.” The lady started jumping up and down and clapping her hands and said, “PRAISE THE LORD! He not only sent me groceries, but He made the devil pay for them. Praise the Lord! Ah yes, God blesses simple faith. The truth is real faith is incredibly powerful. Once when speaking to a father who was pleading with Jesus to heal his demented son, and who cried “..If You can do anything, have pity on us ..” Jesus responds like this. Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Mark 9:23
Amazing.! All things are possible to us.
Jesus modeled faith to his disciples. He explained faith to them and taught the scriptures to all of us. He taught faith. But one of the things I find most intriguing about our Lord is that He commanded us to have it. He expects us to have faith and exercise faith. He even rebuked his disciples and others for not using faith in times of trouble. Times when we might want to sympathize with people, Jesus rebukes them!! Now I am not a theologian, but neither were the apostles. As one reads the things the Bible says about faith, we find the ways of obtaining faith were very straightforward, simple, and easy to comprehend.
Here is faith’s definition:
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Faith is the conviction that what God has said and promised is real. It is living as though God will really do what He has said. But faith is not a passport for greed. It is not a method of manipulating the things of God to get what we want. It is the way we live successful godly lives in the face of an ungodly culture. It is not the way we can get the stuff from the world, but the way we overcome the world.
1 John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world–our faith.
Does that mean that those who live by faith do not have the things they need? No, the opposite is true. Those who live for God and exercise their faith receive everything they need from God, without having to conform to the world’s standards.
Psalm 34:9-10 Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing. The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
Jesus expects us to use faith. He has already made provisions for us and faith is the way we receive them.