Do you really believe?


Luke 5:12-13  And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bible.kingjamesbiblelite

This story has a few lessons. The leprosed man was in need of healing. The interesting thing is that he believed in Jesus' ability to heal him, but what he wasn't sure of was if Jesus would be willing to heal him. Willingness to help is tied to love and compassion. He knew very well of Jesus' power but not much about Jesus' love. Jesus proved he truly had both the power and compassion to heal the leprosed man. 

Today, it seems the reverse is the case. Everyone seems to be aware that God loves them. What most of us seem to lack faith in is Jesus' power and ability to meet our needs. So we look somewhere else for help. 

And another group of us believe that he is willing and able to meet our needs but we don't know that our prayers can be answered. We believe Jesus is willing and able but we can't get him to do it by our own prayers (we don't mind seeing Jesus physically to ask him one on one), so we assign our prayers to God to someone else to do for us. 

There is a portion of scripture that can help us immensely:

‭Romans 10:6-11 NRSV‬
[6] But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) [7] “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). [8] But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); [9] because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. [10] For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. [11] The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” 

https://bible.com/bible/2016/rom.10.6.NRSV

To further rationalize this portion of Scripture, it is clear that all we need is to believe and to speak forth. "The  word is near you" (I like to interpret that phrase as "Jesus is near you" , because Jesus is 'The Word' ). The believing comes by reading the Bible and learning about God; who he is, what he can do, his terms and conditions etc. Then we can make requests as appropriate. The Bible says no one who believes in him will be put to shame.

Therefore we must know he loves us, believe he has the power to meet our needs and make our requests known expectantly and surely He will answer our prayers. Amen. 

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