Last week, God took us back to the firm foundational basic of living by faith.  Faith is where our salvation began.  At some point, each one of us heard the good news about Jesus; His sinless life, death on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin, and His resurrection again to eternal life.  We chose to accept this truth and this salvation by faith alone.

After choosing to put our faith in what we heard, then we experienced the grace of God, the forgiveness of our sin, the weight of our shame and condemnation lifted, and so much more!

When it comes to God’s word coming to pass in our lives, it begins with our faith.  It begins with our faith, endures by our faith, is spoken and prophesied by our faith, manifests by our faith, and is freely given away to others by our faith.  It is all God at work in cooperation with us through our faith.

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Jesus is alive and well and still desires to seek and save the lost, fill them with the Holy Spirit, and cooperate with them to continue to do all of the works that He did in the flesh and even greater things!

As we saw last week, however, there is one thing that can stop these things from happening to the degree that God has planned and purposed them to; our faith.  Even Jesus, God, Himself in the flesh, could not do any miracles in His own hometown among His own family and friends for one reason:

Mark 6:5/Matthew 13:58

He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them because of their lack of faith.

It was not only the faith of those intended to receive miracles from Jesus, but also His own disciples ministering out in His name who had issues with their faith.  Right after the transfiguration, we find this account:

Matthew 17:14-20

14 When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”

17 “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.

19 Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

According to Jesus, it does not take much faith at all for the impossible to be possible for us.  The disciples discerned that it was a demon causing this boy’s seizures.  However, they could not drive it out. 

It was an issue of the faith of this boy’s father and also the little faith of the disciples that caused them to be unable to drive out that demon and bring healing to the boy’s life.  

The father cried out to Jesus, “I believe, but help my unbelief.” according to the same account recorded in Mark 9.

And again, this was one of the concerns that Jesus had about His return:

Luke 18:8

…when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Unfortunately, we don’t have to look very far in history beyond the death and resurrection of Jesus to see why He was concerned.  In fact, the very same day that He rose from the grave, He dealt with the issue of the lack of faith of His own disciples.  The very same people who lived and ministered with Jesus and were firsthand eyewitnesses of His power and authority still lacked faith in Him.

Mark 16:9-20

[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20.]

9 When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demon