Increase Our Faith – Devotions for 4-9-25
Luke 17:5 “The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our Faith!”
We often hear Jesus in the Gospels say things like, “Oh ye of little faith.” Jesus said things like that to His disciples. Faith was important to Jesus; He talked about faith a lot. Faith is important to all of us as we walk through this life.
I wonder if the disciples/apostles ever got tired of Jesus saying they had little faith? I wonder if that bothered them.
Our text may be an indication that they were bothered to some degree, at least it has them calling out for Him to increase their faith. Maybe they got tired of that, maybe they just saw how weak their faith was in other ways. But however it was shown to them, they realized that their faith was not all that strong, so they asked Jesus to increase their faith.
What about our faith? Do we need our faith increased? I know I do. I think we all could use an increase in our faith. We are all “ye of little faith.”
Just think what greater faith would do for us. We would worry less, fear less. We would share more with others about Jesus, we would stand stronger for the truth, we would love others more. All parts of our life would be better if we had a stronger faith.
So, we should do as the apostles did and ask Jesus to increase our faith.
I believe that I cannot make my own faith stronger. I cannot manufacture more faith within me. I need to turn to God and ask Him to increase my faith. God needs to do in me, what I am incapable of doing on my own. Increase my faith!
Here is the truth. Jesus is in the business of increasing all our faith. Sometimes He does it by some great word in a sermon we hear at church. Sometimes it comes from something we read in a book or hear in a song. Most of the time it comes in some way through the scriptures as God’s word does it’s work in our hearts and minds.
But there are other ways that God works in our lives to increase our faith and often they come in ways we don’t really like. Whenever some problem comes up in our life, we face a faith strengthening event. Will we turn to God in prayer and ask Him to help us through it, or will we try and tackle that problem on our own. When we turn to God, we give Him an opportunity to increase our faith. When we handle things on our own, we ignore God and there is no chance to have our faith increased.
What trials are you walking through right now? Instead of looking at them as a pain, a problem to overcome, look at them as a chance for God to come into that problem and increase your faith. Pray about it. Ask God to help you through it. Give that issue to God and watch God do His work in your life.
That will increase your faith. Whenever we see God answer a prayer and help us through a problem, it increases our faith. Whenever God rescues us from yet another problem, it increases our trust in Him.
One way God increases our faith, is through problems, not by keeping problems away from us. I wonder what problems came up for the apostles when they asked Jesus to increase their faith. I’m sure some issue came up and Jesus sat back and watched if they would try and handle it themselves or if they would ask God for help? What will we do? If we want our faith increased, we need to read God’s word and turn to Him for help in our trials.
Pastor Gary.
Leave a Reply