Failure and Faith

By P.E. Huffman
June 18, 2001

“And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said
unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they
were come into the ship, the wind ceased.” (Matthew 14:31-32)

Since the Garden of Eden, humans have wanted to take life into their own
hands. It’s our nature. Relying on someone else—even God—is scary.
Sticking with the tried and true gives us a sense of comfort. We want to trust
the known and God doesn’t box Himself into our predetermined mindset.

Sometimes we think that we have faith in God when in reality we have

misdirected it into people, organizations, rituals, and circumstances. All these
things will discourage us, because people will fail, organizations are imperfect,
rituals are deadening, and circumstances change. Our Lord Jesus and the
promises in His Word have to be the center of our hope and trust.

Yet, if we’re going to please God (“Without faith it is impossible to please

him…” Hebrews 11:6), then we have to take a leap into the great unknown.
Instead of relying on ourselves and our abilities, we have to risk our pride, our
comfort and our wills to go further.

There is a story (whether true or not, I’m unsure) of when Thomas Aquinas
visited Rome. While there, he was shown the splendor of the papal palace.
His companion remarked to him, “Well Thomas, the church in our day cannot
say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’” “No,” replied Aquinas, “but neither can she
say, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.’” If we’re not
careful, due to our increased riches and worldly wisdom, our faith in God
Almighty proportionately decreases because of our refusal to keep Him in the
center of our lives.

God has given every one of us a measure of faith (Romans 12:3). In order to
obtain “great” faith such as the Lord desires, we need to work toward it.
Nothing good ever comes to those who are unwilling to pay the price. Paul
said, ”Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans
10:17). If you want to build your faith, try reading the Bible and books that are
biblically based. A lot of times we hinder God and our growth in God by the
things that we allow into our minds, through what we read, watch or hear.

The gospels mention a time when a certain man brought his demon-
possessed son to the disciples for deliverance (Matthew 17:14-21, Mark 9:14-
29). When the disciples could not bring about deliverance, the crowd came to
Jesus. Immediately Jesus told the crowd that they were a “faithless
generation,” and then He cast the demon out of the boy. Later, the disciples
asked Him why they couldn’t cast out the demon. Jesus said, “Howbeit this
kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting” (Matthew 17:10).
I imagine the disciples had to be pretty busy guys. Jesus had recently given
them power over sickness and demons (Matthew 10:1), so they were being
thronged by the needy to the point that they weren’t spending as much time
with the Master as a disciple should be. They were losing their focus. We too
can lose our focus on Christ (even to those that are not part of the ministry) if
we get caught up in this life. When that happens, we lose the faith that God
requires to become active in our lives.

Prayer, fasting, and reading the Bible are not going to make God do anything,
for we are not saved by works (Ephesians 2:9). These things do, however, kill
the carnality (our will) in our lives, and when our will diminishes, we can more
easily trust Him.

Paul warned that the, “flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against
the flesh” (Galatians 5:17). This is best illustrated by an old Indian that came
to God. One day, he talked with an acquaintance about his struggles with his
carnal nature. The Indian told his friend that his struggle was like a couple of
dogs constantly fighting. One was a well-bred dog and the other was a
mongrel. The outcome of the dogs fighting, he said, was determined by
himself alone. “How so?” asked his friend. The Indian replied that it was
because whichever one he fed the most became stronger, enabling it to win.

The true test of faith is to keep our eyes on Him, even when everything
appears to indicate that God is not going to come through with an answer. As
the three Hebrew children were about to be thrown into the fiery furnace, they
declared that God would deliver them out of their circumstances, but even if
He didn’t, they were going to trust Him (Daniel 3).

Yes, there are going to be frightening times when the Lord decides to meet a
need at the last minute. Yes, sometimes the results of our faith are going to
be different than what we expected and wanted. But our Lord never fails.
Never! We may falter, stumble and fall, but if we turn our eyes toward the Lord
Jesus, He will rescue us every time. As the old hymn says, our hope is built
on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

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