How Much Faith Do You Need?
A big strong construction worker was sitting in my office with questions about faith and his eternal status. He said something like, “I don’t think I have a strong enough faith in Jesus to be saved."I asked him how much faith he needed. "I don’t know. But it seems like more than I have."I responded, “It’s not the strength of your faith that matters, it’s the object of your faith.”I asked him how much faith he needed for the chair he was sitting in to hold him up. And he said, “I guess enough faith in it to sit down on it.” And that was exactly right.
It’s not the strength of your faith that matters, it’s the object of your faith.
Jesus told us that having tiny faith is enough, if we believe in the right things and act on them. He said that if our faith was only as big as a mustard seed (see the tiny size of a mustard seed in the picture above), we could move mountains with it. So our faith doesn’t have to be huge to make a difference. It just needs to be big enough for us to act on it, to trust in whatever the object of our faith is. It’s the worthiness of what we are trusting in that matters.Let’s say I came to you, “Hey, let’s go flying.” Then I bring you to Chicago Executive Airport and we head for a hanger to fly an airplane. It wouldn’t matter how much faith you would have in me, going up in an airplane that I’m piloting would lead to both of our deaths. Because, I AM NOT A PILOT! I don’t have a clue how to fly an airplane. I’ve crashed the simulator in my iPhone many times. Your tremendously strong faith in my flying skills would be wasted, because it would be misdirected. And you would die.On the other hand, if David Garcia offered to take you flying, it would be a different story. He’s a skilled commercial airline pilot and a experienced licensed small aircraft pilot. Even if you were scared to death and full of doubt, if you had just enough faith in him to get into the plane, you’d take off, fly, and land safely. Because it would not be the strength of your faith that would matter, it would be the object of your faith. When it comes to flying a plane, I would not be a worthy object of your faith, but David Garcia would be.So when people say, “It doesn’t matter what you believe. It only matters how sincere you are.” They could not be more sincerely wrong! What you believe is everything! It’s the object of your faith that matters, not the quantity of it.So my prayer for you in this series, “What do Christians Believe?” is that you come to believe in the one true God, and that you begin to depend on him, trust in him, for your life today and for eternity.He alone is worthy of your faith.