Joel Kontinen
“Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.” (Mark 11:23).
Faith is one of the key words of the Gospels. It can achieve incredible things. Time and again, Jesus taught about the significance of believing, of having faith.
"Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted,” (Matthew 15:28), He told a Canaanite woman who believed He could and was willing to heal her very sick daughter.
Jesus also praised the great faith of a Roman centurion (Matthew 8:10), who saw Him as the One who had authority over sickness, even at a distance.
In contrast, Jesus often rebuked those who failed to believe. “Men of little faith,” He would say to the disciples once and again when they doubted Him.
It was not just any kind of faith that Jesus meant, but faith in Him. The Letter to the Hebrews gives us a brief definition of faith:
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1, NIV).
Faith is essential:
“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Heb. 11:6).
Faith in the Bible as God’s self-revelation made modern science possible. The pioneers of science, for instance Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur, believed that a rational Creator had created a rational universe that obeys natural laws that could be studied.
Some Christians have succeeded in exercising the kind of faith that is not deferred by seemingly impossible hurdles. British evangelist Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947), who is known as the Apostle of Faith, fits nicely into this category. God used him to touch and heal countless lives all over the world.
