sober-minded

A leper came to Jesus, imploring Him, and said, “If you will, You can make me clean.” Moved with pity, the Lord stretched out His hand and touched Him and said to Him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was clean.

A father came to Jesus; “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. The disciples were not able to cast it out. This has been happening since childhood. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us!”

One man, the leper, came confessing ignorance of what he couldn’t know (”if You are willing”) but loads of faith in what he did know (”You can make me clean!”)  The other man, the father, wasn’t sure that God existed, or that He rewards those who seek Him. Jesus had no rebuke for the leper’s qualification, “If you will.” But He had one for the words of the dad: “If You can? All things are possible for one who believes!”

The words of Jesus pierced that father’s heart so that he immediately cried out and confessed his true state to Him, asking Him to help His unbelief. It was a cry, at last, of faith.

God doesn’t want us to come speaking presumptuously about His will for us and our requests. We don’t know His secret purposes. We implore Him to save our sons and daughters, we request that He heal our bodies of cancer, all the while resting in His sovereign design.

But He does want us to come to Him in full confidence that He is fully able to do, in a heartbeat, what we’ve asked of Him! And that no matter how He chooses to work, He has rewards in store for our audacious and settled belief in Him. He is the God who can. And so very wonderfully often, He is also the God who will.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 19:58 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.