The Force Of Faith


By Phil Scovell






                          INTRODUCTION

                            Luke 17:5

And the Apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.

     The Greek word for "increase" in this verse means (add to,
join to, gather to, or to collect).


ILLUSTRATION.

     My mother-in-law, she has been in Heaven for many years now,
use to raise over 25,000 chickens a year on the Iowa farm on which
my wife was raised as a child.  Most of the chickens were
purchased as chicks, raised to a certain age, and then sold.  On
the other hand, Mildred kept hundreds around for sitting hens.
That means, therefore, she had lots of eggs to gather each day.
She used a single basket.  That's right.  A single basket that
would hold at least 150 eggs.  She would gather that many before
transferring the eggs to cartons and repeating the process.  I can
hear someone saying, "That sounds risky."  Not as far as Mildred
was concerned.

     I thought of this one day when considering faith.  Perhaps
the most earthy definition of faith I could think of would be
"Putting all your eggs in one basket; God's."  Indeed, such is the
nature of faith.  It is in one basket and if that basket isn't
God's, your faith is misplaced.


DISCIPLESHIP.

We are no different than the disciples.  We all want our
businesses to prosper, our children and grandchildren to live
right and Godly, and we want to pay our bills on time.  We don't
want to be sick, contract cancer or any other deadly disease, and
we desire a long healthy life.  If you are normal, you likely
could add about a thousand more such things to this list.  So, if
we break it down to one request we could make of God and be
assured Jesus would grant that one wish, then I am certain we all
would ask the same of our Lord as did His disciples; "Increase our
faith."

     There is only one problem with the request the disciples made
of the Lord; He did not increase there faith.  If you recall, when
they came and asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he did so.  Now,
when they want their faith increased, the Lord launched off into a
story about comparing a tiny mustard seed to a giant mountain.
I'm sure the disciples were as confused as I was upon reading the
context of this story.

     When it comes to faith, we have a problem.  At least, we as
Christians have a problem.  Most likely, because our Lord used
terms in His ministry such as "Great faith," and "Little faith,"
and "No faith," the teaching of faith by Charismatics and
Pentecostals has been, therefore, reduced to faith in degrees, or
stages, or measurements of strength, or levels, or plateaus upon
which we climb higher and higher until we reach God.  almost
sounds like the Tower of Babel there for a minute.  I've even
heard sermon illustrations used to explain how faith was like
lifting weights.  The more you practice and exercise, the stronger
you get.

     This also puts me in mind of something very similar to how
faith works.  It is, unfortunately, just another erroneous
Biblical teaching on faith which explains that faith works by
practicing and practicing and practicing.  For example, you aren't
aloud to start out with the big things such as death or the dying,
or cancer or brain tumors, and especially big things like
blindness or mental illnesses or mental retardation.  Are all
those the same thing, perhaps?  Being blind myself, I know that
one is wrong.  Anyhow, you begin with little things such as a hang
nail.  Of course, if you leave it alone, the hang nail is going to
eventually heal itself but perhaps you get credit for praying
about it.  Next comes headaches.  Let's practice on those
migraines, or maybe we should just go for the stress or sinus
headaches.  Migraines is a pretty big leap of faith for most of
us right off the bat.  Once you have graduated from these "lower
levels" of faith, you will be ready for the big time.  There's
only one little problem with this false teaching.  It's wrong!
How do I know?  Let's say you just learned you have a brain tumor
the size of a grapefruit in the center of your head and it is
growing an inch every month.  They give you two months to live.
Before then, you will lose all control of your entire body.  Even
your eye lids will be too weak to remain opened near the end.
Question.  How are you going to get all that faith practicing done
before you die?  No, you see, Jesus wasn't talking about degrees
or levels or stages of faith.  He was talking about what people
believed.  Even His own disciple got it wrong.  They wanted Jesus
to add to their faith by gathering more and more things of a
spiritual nature together, such as miracles, raising of the dead,
opening of blind eyes, and casting out of demons, in order that
their faith, not His, could do great things.  Admirable but
misplaced.

     Here is a strange verse in the Bible worth your
consideration.  It is Matthew 13:58.

"And he did not many mighty works there because of their
unbelief."

     doesn't that bother you just a little?  It does me, or it
did, until I realized what was being taught.  I'm not teaching on
the interpretation of this verse at the moment but in relationship
to faith, I thought it was a brain puzzler and worth your time to
at least ponder in light of our study under present
consideration.  Need I point out, it does not say that Jesus did
few miracles there because of their lack of faith?  Think about
it.  Oh, by the way.  "mighty works" in the Greek is the word for
miracles.

     Let me take you a step further by pointing out another
interesting fact.  The word used by the King James translators for
"faith" is used 244 times throughout the entire New Testament.  In
John's Gospel, however, it is never used a single time.  How could
that be possible?  John was the disciple whom Jesus loved.  John
wrote in great detail on eight different miracles which Jesus did.
Furthermore, John concludes his Gospel record by confessing that
if he had taken the time to write about everything Jesus did,
including all of his miracles, the world could not even contain
the volumes of books.  Wow!  what a library that would be.
That's a lot of miracles in three and a half years.  Yet, John
said it was true and he was an eye witness.  So, did John just
forget the word "faith" was something he should have used when
talking about Jesus and our Lord's miraculous works?  I don't
think so.  Unless, of course, you don't believe all Scripture is
inspired of God.  No, John was not being negligent, he was proving
a point.  Although the word "faith" never once appears in His
Gospel account, the word "believe," or various forms of it, are
used 100 times.  I wonder what believing has to do with faith?
Are they the same thing, as some suggest, or do they have
different meanings?



                             OUTLINE


     Here will be the outline I will be following in lessons to
come.

I.    The Origin Of Faith.
II.   The Operation Of Faith.
III.  The Opposite Of Faith.
IV.   The Object Of Your Faith.
V.    The Open Door Of Faith.

end Of Lesson One.


It Sounds Like God To Me.
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