In some of my recent reading, I kept coming back to a question that I had to ask myself, “Do I / we really believe?”. Faith in God and Jesus come from believing in what the Bible says and accepting God’s offer of the gift of forgiveness and salvation through Jesus. But do we as Christians really believe that? If so:
1. Why don’t we see more miracles happening? Jesus said that we’d do more that what He did (John 14:12) – or some say bigger and better works that He did here since He’s now with the Father. Either way – why don’t we see more miracles?
2. Why don’t we act like we truly believe? John’s gospel (John 3:13) tells that we are saved from perishing if we believe. Why then do we fear death so much?
3. Why don’t more people share their faith? Acts 1:8 applies to us as much as it did the original followers. Why then do we have so many people who never make it out of “Jerusalem” much less to “the ends of the earth?
4. And what about power? In the same verse from Acts, Jesus promises the power of the Holy Spirit. Most Christians (myself included) don’t seem to have any sense of power (which may be a good thing in the human sense). Is the power still available to us?
I guess I expect to see things be affected to a greater degree IF we all truly believe. Something tells me we have more doubts than we have belief – at least our collective actions seem to tell me that. Sure there are sparks here and there but I don’t believe the power of the Holy Spirit is limited to just random sparks. And so my prayer for all, myself and others, is the prayer of the father in Mark’s gospel (Mark 9:24), “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”.
Be well,
Steve