Faith, part 9

An important factor in understanding who it is that acts through our faith. This is explained well in Luke 5:12-13:

“And it happened when He was in a certain city, that behold, a man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus; and he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, ‘Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.’ Then He put out His hand and touched him, saying, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’ Immediately the leprosy left him.”

If You are willing. These are the key words many of us would like to forget when we have faith. The problem with forgetting these words is it makes our faith useless. When we choose to have faith while forgetting God is willing we don’t have faith in God. We have faith in ourselves, in what we want, and in our own power.

This leper had an understanding of faith that we should all have. He knew that the Lord had to be willing to heal his leprosy. We cannot force the Lord to do what we desire. He will only do what He is willing to do. We must have faith enough to understand that.

There are times that we have complete faith that the Lord will do what we ask, but He refuses. Sometimes the sick die. Sometimes He is not willing to save the one we prayed for. Sometimes He is unwilling to heal us, and that must be accepted. If He chooses not to answer our prayers we must have complete faith that there is a reason. Christ had complete faith that He could be spared from the cross, and He still let Himself be crucified. Sometimes the Lord’s servants must suffer just as His Son did. We may not want to accept this, but we must if we are to have faith.

Part of having faith is understanding that the Lord’s will supersedes our own.
When what we want is not His will it cannot be done no matter how hard we pray. We can ask Him to change His will, but He may not. This must be accepted if we are to serve Him. We must have faith that His will is being done. Everything is in His name, and not our own. We must have faith. He must be willing.