Wait, How Much Faith?

Faith. It’s something that has been on my mind recently. After hearing about the recent tragic news of Bethel’s Kalley Heili and her husband’s daughter, Olive, who passed away due to breathing trouble, Kalley and her husband decided to take a step of “faith”. Through many social media posts, and church announcements, word was spread that they wanted to pray for the revival of little Olive and the short, precious life she had lived. It was heartbreaking for me to hear about the news of their child’s passing, but a bit head-scratching to hear about the news that they wanted to raise baby Olive from the dead. They claimed that they were stepping out in faith. Now, I am all for praying and asking almost anything of God. I know if I were in their shoes, I would be heartbroken and would be grounded in prayer for my baby to come back, too. However, this whole dilemma brought a question to my head. I thought, “How do we know the boundaries of faith?” In other words, how do we know the difference between not having enough faith and what God wanted? For example; when baby Olive was officially pronounced dead, some people said that she hadn’t raised from the dead because the church didn’t have enough faith. But...how do we know what is enough faith? Or how do we know whether or not God wanted this to happen? Here are my thoughts:

In a book I am reading about hearing God and how to interpret what and how He communicates with us, I read through a chapter where the author talked about this whole idea of “not having enough faith versus what God wanted”. He talked about how God will communicate with us when to step out in faith. For example, let’s look at one of the most popular “faith” stories in the Bible: Peter walking on water. Matthew 14:28-29 states, “And Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus (ESV).” In these verses we see something pretty awesome. Peter didn’t just walk out on to the water (which is something Peter would do). Instead, he said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water” to which Jesus then said, “Come”. What I realized with the help of my book, is that Peter was only able to take a step of faith because Jesus had called Him to do so. This is a prime example that God calls us to step in faith, rather than us just searching for reasons to claim to have faith. When it comes to faith, the first step is obedience. When we feel called to do something or go somewhere, then we must be obedient to step out in faith. However, if we just claim that we are having faith to do something we want, it’s not following His calling. Matthew 17:20 states, “He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you’ (ESV).” In this verse Jesus shows us that there is no such thing as “not enough faith”. He claims that we could have the smallest amount of faith possible, yet if we follow His calling with obedience, we can move mountains (figuratively). So...where has God called you? Have you been obedient to step out in faith to that calling? Sometimes God uses humbling experiences, such as making a fool of our little faith by showing us what He can do with such little faith in order to show us His greatness. Thank You, Jesus, for calling us out of the boat. May we be obedient to follow Your calling.

-Jack Hilsher