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Last time we talked about the fact the Christian life is a life of faith, in God. And I define
faith as a disposition of trust in God, that lets God work. And because that’s what faith
is, how much faith we have ceases to be the all-important issue; the all-important issue
is what you put your faith in. You see, on one occasion, the disciples came to Jesus
in Luke Chapter 17 in verse 5, and they said “Increase our faith!” and Jesus replied,
“If you have faith as small as mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted
and planted in the sea, and it will obey you.” Now, I find that extremely interesting. The
disciples said, “Lord, increase our faith,” give us a big faith. And Jesus said, “If
you have faith as small as a grain of mustard seed, you will see things happen.” Mustard
seed was the smallest known seed in the Middle East. Now, what did Jesus mean? Well, what
he meant was this: that the all-important thing is not the quantity of your faith, the
all-important thing is the object in which you put your faith; and if you only have mustard
size seed faith, and you put your mustard seed sized faith in the right object, you
put mustard seed sized faith in God, you will see God work. Let me illustrate this.
First time I ever flew on an airplane, was when I was eighteen years of age, I’d left
school in England, and I’d got a job in what is now Zimbabwe, in Southern Africa,
working on a farm, farming was my background. And I went along to the London Airport in
England, to board the flight out to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, and I’d never flown
before, I was a little bit nervous, ‘cause I knew sometimes these planes came down when
they weren’t supposed to. So I was a little bit nervous, and I went to the check-in desk,
got my boarding card, and when I got onto the aircraft, my seat was the middle of three
seats, on the left side of the plane, it was a Boeing 707, three seats either side, an
isle down the middle; and when I got to my seat, on my left, next to the window, was
a little Scottish lady, who was holding on to the armrest to tightly her knuckles were
white. And when I sat down, we introduced ourselves to each other, and she said to me,
“Have… have you ever flown before?” And I said “No, I haven’t.” She said,
“Neither have I,” and I thought, “I… I thought you hadn’t.” She looked very
nervous. She told me she had a daughter and a son-in-law who lived in Zimbabwe, and they
had three young children, she had never seen these grandchildren, she was flying out to
spend a month, or two months with them, and she said “If it wasn’t for my grandchildren,
I wouldn’t risk my life doing this.” She was really very nervous.
Then a South African business man came and sat on the seat on my right. He’d probably
flown many, many times. He just got out a book and he began to read. And then the aircraft
went down the runway, the engines opened up, and we took off, and as we lifted off the
ground, this poor little lady next to me was shriveled up, all fearful, I was sitting next
to her, holding on to the armrest; the man on my right was just reading his book.
We eventually arrived in Harare, about 16 hours later, having stopped once or twice
on the way, and all the way out, this lady was nervous, and tense; I was a little bit
nervous, the man on my right was totally relaxed. Now, the reason I tell you this, is because
the three of us each had a different quantity of faith; the lady on my left, if you like,
had mustard seed-sized faith, just enough to allow her to be persuaded there was a 51
per cent chance of survival. I, in contrast, had potato-sized faith. Much bigger than her
mustard seed. The man on my right, in contrast to both of us, had watermelon-sized faith.
But the interesting thing is this: although we all had a different quantity of faith,
we all arrived in Harare at the same time. Why? Because the all-important thing was not
the quantity of our faith; the all-important thing was the object in which we placed our
faith. It was the aircraft that got us there. And so, when these disciples said “Lord,
increase our faith,” His answer was to say, “You don’t understand the nature of faith!”
If you had mustard-seed sized faith, and you put that in God, God will work. Now, having
said that of course, there’s advantage in an increased faith; the advantage is you’re
relaxed. The man on my right was relaxed, enjoyed the journey, the lady on my left was
tense the whole way out. The more you know the object in which you place your faith,
the more relaxed you become. So how does your faith grow? Very simply, Romans 10, verse
17 says faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. In other words, the more
we get to know God, one of the ways we get to know Him is through his word, the more
we get to know God, the more you discover how trustworthy He is. And that’s why the
great need for many of us, if we’re going to live by faith, as we must, is to get to
know God better, because the more we know God, the more bigger you see Him to be, the
more utterly trustworthy you know Him to be, and the more easy and natural it becomes to
live by faith; for without faith, it’s impossible to please Him.