Today’s readings: Luke 17-19, Psalm 119:121-144
Luke 17:1-6
And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. 3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
When I think of asking God to increase my faith, I think of times of doubt or severe struggle. I’m ill and need God’s healing touch, and I read his promise to answer prayer. I pray, and the answer comes all too slowly from my perspective. Increase my faith! I’m facing a major financial challenge. I know God will provide—just as he has in the past—but I don’t see a pathway forward. Increase my faith! A relationship is strained to the point of breaking. There is no hint of the possibility of reconciliation. Increase my faith!
What are the places in your life that cry out, Increase my faith?
I visited with a woman years ago whose sister had offended her and wounded her deeply. She told me that she just couldn’t find a way to forgive her. And she worried about this because she knew she must do so. She just didn’t have it in her, and she wondered whether she should refrain from receiving the Lord’s Supper until she had forgiven her sister.
I told her it seemed like she needed to get up the hill to get gas for her car, but she didn’t have any gas to get up the hill. That may not make sense to you, but to her it did. The Lord’s Supper was the fuel she needed to be able to forgive her sister. She needed to be forgiven so she could forgive.
I think that’s the same thing as saying, Increase my faith!
That real-life example is very closely related to what prompted the apostles to ask Jesus, “Increase our faith!” He had just talked about forgiving an offending brother—even if that brother sins against you seven times in a day and seven times comes back saying, “I repent.” “You must forgive him,” Jesus says.
No wonder the apostles respond, “Increase our faith!”
Jesus answers by telling them that faith as small as a mustard seed could command a mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea. His point is not that they need some heroic quantity of faith. God draws near to the poor in spirit—to those who know they need what only he can give. He shows mercy to those who come to him.
Such faith doesn’t earn God’s favor or get us to God. Faith receives what God is already giving—the mercy and grace that are ours in Christ.
But God calls us not only to receive his grace, but also to extend that grace to others—to love our neighbors and even our enemies. He sends us into the world to testify to his grace and pass on what we have received. Sometimes that involves forgiving someone again and again. Sometimes it involves waiting, trusting, and hoping for God’s answer to our prayers. Sometimes it means facing something that seems utterly impossible. And sometimes it may simply mean finding our way back to God when we have wandered.
A call to God asking him to increase our faith is itself an act of faith. We ask because we believe he hears us, that he is able to help us, and that his will toward us in Christ is good.
The point isn’t to look inside ourselves and wonder whether we have enough faith. It is to look to Jesus. Faith as small as a mustard seed is enough when it rests in a Savior as great as Jesus.
So when forgiveness seems impossible, when the answer to prayer seems painfully slow, when there seems to be no pathway forward, we can pray with the apostles:
“Increase our faith!”
And then look to the One in whom our faith rests.
Follow the Word is a daily Bible reading and devotional ministry of St. John Lutheran Church, Cypress, Texas.
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