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.”
“It’s not the strength of your faith that matters, it’s the object of your faith,” I responded. I then 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 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 to 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; 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 said 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 with me piloting would lead to both of our deaths. Because, I AM NOT A PILOT! I’ve crashed the simulator on my iPhone enough times to show that. 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 one of our airline pilots here at The Bridge offered to take you flying, it would be a different story. We have skilled commercial airline pilots who have more than enough experience in small aircraft to safely fly you around. Even if you were scared to death and full of doubt, if you had just enough faith in one of them 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 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.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” – Jesus (John 3:16).