Today, we shall continue with our discussions on the different kinds of faith. We have looked at little faith and weak faith. Today, we shall be looking at Great Faith.
What is great faith? Great faith is a faith that will not give up in spite of opposition. It is faith that responds with knowledge.
Some truths are easy to believe while others are difficult. If you believe something that is difficult to believe, then you have “great faith.” If you do not believe something that is relatively easy to believe, then you have little faith.
Since faith is the conviction or persuasion that something is true, it implies that people who have little faith have not been convinced or persuaded of even the basic truths, whereas people who have great faith have been persuaded or convinced of some of the hard and difficult truths which few people come to believe.
Great faith and little faith have nothing to do with the size, amount or degree of faith. Rather, the terms “great faith” and “little faith” describe the difficulty of the truths that are believed.
Some examples about little faith and great faith abound in the Scriptures. There are numerous truths from Scripture that are easy to believe.
People with little faith have problem with believing some of the simple, elementary and introductory truths of Scripture such as “God is love” or “Jesus gives eternal life to anyone who believes in Him.” As simple as these truths are, many people do not believe them.
However, there are other truths in Scripture that are really hard to believe. For instance, it is difficult to believe that God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19).
Frankly speaking, if I worry about tomorrow, it means that I don’t believe that God will supply all my needs, and often, I find myself trying to supply for my own needs myself. So, this means that I don’t yet believe this promise in Philippians 4:19.
Great faith is based on the amount and quality of information that you have received, accepted and endorsed.
A good example is the woman of Canaan, a Syrophoenician by birth whose daughter was sick unto death. When Jesus told the woman that she could not get what she requested for, she never gave up. Rather she responded with knowledge. She spoke back the words of faith (Matt 15:22-28). When Jesus heard her informed answer, He said to her, “…woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”
The more accurate the information you have is, the better your faith will be. When you don’t have enough information from the Word of God concerning a particular issue, your faith will be little. The cure to this kind of faith is simply to learn what God has said in His Word concerning that issue. Keep listening to tapes; keep studying the Word of God in that area until your thinking, ideas and perspective change!
Another example of Great Faith is found in Matthew 8:5-13. Here, Jesus was impressed by the great faith of a Gentile. He said, “I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel.”
The Centurion believed in his own lack of merit. Though he was courteous, humble, and a good man, though he loved the Jewish people and built a Synagogue for them, he knew that he did not deserve anything from God.
Despite his high standing and all the good he had done, he knew he was unworthy to meet with Jesus (Matt. 8:8).
But most people think they do deserve favours from God. They think God owes them something.
It is much harder to believe that all we have and all we appear to have accomplished in life is only by the grace of God. But the Centurion believed this, and told Jesus that he was not worthy to have Jesus visit his house. The Centurion believed some truth that only few others believed.
He believed that Jesus could heal some with His words and from a great distance. He said to Jesus, “Only speak the Word, and my servant will be healed” (Matt. 8:8).
This truly is great faith, and only few believe such an idea. As a result, Jesus marvelled at the Centurion’s great faith, and healed his servant from a distance, simply by the power of His Word. Great faith simply believes the truths that are ordinarily difficult to believe.
Watch out for the Good News from the Pulpit!
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