Great Faith in a Merciful God
GREAT FAITH RECEIVES FROM THE LORD
"I have seen no great faith in Israel", Jesus says. Why? Because for our Jewish friends that had the rituals and the cultures going before them, they had to follow the steps to the blessings of God.
We the Gentiles with little knowledge and not knowing the rituals and the cultures and the laws, we seek after the blessing and then the rituals follow us. Many times the Gentiles get it the other way round.
It is us the Gentiles who know the value of grace more than our brethren because we don't deserve. We are as good as dogs, and those who have gone before us are as mother dogs. But thank God for the grace of God. Thank God for Jesus, for His death that qualifies us to receive from Him when we have faith in Him. Great faith indeed does receive from the Lord!
I do not know what level, in your encounter with Jesus you may be at. Maybe you are still at the level where Jesus is telling you that you are not good enough. It is not because he is condemning you, He is drawing you in!
The Bible says in the book of Song of Solomon 1:4, "Draw us and we shall run after you. The king has taken me into his chambers."
The Lord may seem to be hiding from us and pulling us away. He is not actually doing this to cast us away but to draw us in! Jesus gave his time to this woman and paid attention to her. The Bible informs us that the disciples said to Jesus, "She is wasting our time, cast her away!" But Jesus continued in an encounter with this woman. And in this encounter, this woman demonstrated such a great faith from which we are learning today.
I would like to encourage you and to pray that the Lord will give you the grace that you need to walk through whatever level of life you are at. Pray to the Lord to give you the grace to rise above and overcome whatever challenges you may be facing, whatever society may say against you or whatever names they may call you. If you come to Jesus, the cross is able to qualify you today and your faith can receive from God.
Irrespective of whether your faith is as small as that of the puppies or as small as that of the mother of the puppies or whatever it or you may be; the grace of God and the blood of Jesus makes us the best of the candidates that we can be to receive from God.
Prayer
Father we want to thank you for the opportunity of coming before you in faith, for faith in itself is a gift from you. You have said that even the grace for which we are saved is a gift from you and no one needs to be proud or boast of it. Father, we pray this day, for each one of us: for every man or woman, every boy and girl; that you would release your grace upon us to hold on, to wait on you, to believe you, to worship you in the waiting, to pursue you in the waiting and to receive from you when that time comes.
Lord, we thank you for your word and we pray that you will seal it with your Spirit in our ears and help us to be doers of your word to the glory of your holy name, Amen.
