“O people of God, be great believers!
Little faith will bring your souls to heaven,
but great faith will bring heaven to your souls.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
.
Early in my ministry an Elder said to me, “Rus, you talk about faith too much!”
Somewhat taken aback by his concern, I said, “If I your pastor do not tell you to have faith in God, who will?”
This Elder was a man of absolute integrity. He was a good man. However, as a prudent man, he did not believe the church should take on any task unless every detail was guaranteed. Nor did he believe Elders should plan on spending money that was not already in the bank.
He had never trusted God to provide in little things, thus he never saw God provide in a big way.
One of the blessing of being a Pastor is that in the course of ministry, I get to see God work miracle after miracle. I have learned to expect God to provide. Having great faith in God comes naturally to me.
Many Christians are so certain that God will not provide they never pray for a miracle, they never step out in faith, and thus, they never see God work a miracle. Their faith remains little.
Five times in His ministry Jesus rebukes the disciples for being men of little faith!
Jesus rebukes them in:
- Matthew 6:30 – when they are worried about daily provisions;
- Matthew 8:26 – when a storm blows in while they are in a boat;
- Matthew 14:31 – when Peter begins to sink after walking on water;
- Matthew 16:8 – when they worried about not bringing bread;
- Matthew 17:20 – when they are unable to cast out a demon.
I can only imagine Jesus’ exasperation with the disciples. They had seen Him work so many miracles, yet they still had little faith.
The only way to grow your faith, is to live in faith. In time, you will begin to see God providing and working miracles everyday. It is then that you will be blessed with great faith!
.
Let your faith rest not in the wisdom of men,
but in the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:5
a guide for the righteous,
who believe in the unseen
and are steadfast in prayer;
who give alms from what We gave them;
who believe in what has been revealed to you
and what was revealed before you,
and have absolute faith in the life to come.
I like this quote. Is it something you wrote?
“We impoverish His ministry the moment we forget He is Almighty. The reason some of us are such poor specimens of Christianity is because we have no Almighty Christ.”
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers, 1993)
It came from the first sentence in “The Cow”, which is the first book of the Koran..
The writings of Mohammed were pretty much what you would expect from an itinerant Methodist (i.e., Asbury) or Baptist preacher until he became in effect the mayor of Medina and began compiling civil law. Later, when he came under attack from Mecca, he was caught up in military campaigns and included “shoot to kill” orders in his writings. All those legal and military writings were gathered up and became part of the Koran along with the religious writings.
Except for those military writings (several written by followers after his death) the Koran would be pretty solid Old Testament teaching. His dispute with Christian theology regards the concept of the Trinity. The problem with Islam is in the way it is used and abused for other purposes, just as the problem with Christianity is in the way it is used and abused for other purposes.
God weeps when religion is used to justify military conquest. It does not matter whether abuse was conducted by crusaders in the Middle Ages or at the hands of jihadists today. He weeps.
Faith is universal. So is the abuse of faith by persons acting under color of religion.
You cannot let Mohammed off the hook for his promotion of violence and murder because he wrote these things later in life.
In contrast, late in his life when his enemies were dragging Him off to kill Him, Jesus specifically condemned the use of violence to protect Himself. Read Luke 22:50-51. Jesus not only condemned the violence, but he healed the injury.
Mohammed was not a peacemaker neither was he a healer.
When his life and his ways were threatened, he turned to violence.
When Jesus was threatened, He carried the cross used in His execution.
Everyone is a person of faith!
Yes, Christian’s have abused their faith, but this abuse has not advocated by Jesus.
The Bible and the Koran are not alike and do not teach the same things. They do not teach the same ethics. Only one of them offers forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
The violence in Afghanistan this week is because some Koran’s were inadvertently burned. I remember after 9/11, Muslims celebrated by burning Bibles in public.
I do not understand how and why you want to defend Mohammed and the violence he encouraged.
Agreed. Mohammed was just an ordinary man, an itinerant preacher who started off as a believer but was flawed and lacked Jesus’ courage of his convictions. His early sermons attracted followers, and when their numbers became a threat to the religious tourism business in Mecca he was run out of town. Had he stayed out of politics and refused secular and military roles at Medina, history would have been very different.
My real complaint is against the use and abuse of religion by people seeking power for other purposes. Leaders in the Christian church have erred just as often and severely as Muslims