In recent weeks in more than one conversation I have come up with the perplexing question that gnaws at people’s spirit at times: how much faith is enough faith?”
Faith is a spiritual matter. Spiritual things have no dimension to them that can be measurable and yet spiritual things are so real! Can one measure love in a tangible way? Some might want to use a worldly standard of showering someone with gifts as a way to measure love but somehow I feel that sooner or later one really would be stuck in the dilemma of how much is enough, how often is enough, and for how long is enough?
Love in it’s truest form is an emotion of the heart that can inspire us to go to the extreme of laying down our lives for someone but at the end of the day there is no true measure no true scale to measure love with. Yet we know it exists.
Can one measure hope? can one measure belief? Is there a quantitative measurement for anything that is spiritual? I think not.
Faith in particular as defined in Hebrews 11: 1 is a sure and unwavering belief in something that cannot yet be seen because it is a future hope (hope being something that drives us forward because of the truth that substantiates it.) but we have come to understand it and embrace it as an irrefutable truth.
Jesus more than once refers to the faith of a mustard seed in the gospel being able to move mountains. Now you and I know that there has ever been a recorded historical event of a mustard seed that did move a mountain so, knowing Jesus would totally ruin his credibility by lying, what does this statement really mean?
Well I believe that the kind of faith that Jesus is referring to is not a faith in our own power but a faith in His power! Biblical faith is not stand alone faith; it is faith that is predicated on trusting in God’s power. Faith appears the moment we first believe.
Faith is an indicator that a tipping point has been achieved. When we move the concept from our head to our heart that Jesus died for us personally, suddenly faith is there where it was not before. It is nurtured and built up not by our power or might but by His Holy Spirit. Faith is sufficient in that there only need be enough to exist that God immediately grabs hold of it and in an epic journey for all of us, by the power of His Holy Spirit makes it grow. It cannot be of us it must be of Him.
Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast.
