Have you ever asked God for something? Maybe a miracle, maybe help for a test, maybe for strength? When you ask God for something, is it hard to trust Him to do it? It’s easy to want the answer to happen right away, or to feel the need to watch God’s every move and make sure He’s doing everything just right (which is pretty silly, considering that God is sovereign, and we aren’t). It’s hard to have faith.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant:

And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment. (Matthew 8:5-13)

What I love about this story is that the centurion’s faith wasn’t based on big, philosophical reasoning. He said, “just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” He knew that Jesus was in authority, and that meant that whatever Jesus said goes. Jesus’ response? We’re told that Jesus marveled! “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.” If you read many of Jesus’ other miracles, you’ll find that people ask Jesus to come and heal their sick, but this centurion trusted Jesus enough to ask Him to only say the words. Do we have that much faith in our Lord?

I wonder if the centurion had thought about whether Jesus would say no. I’m sure that as a man in his position, the centurion had said no plenty of times. Whether he had wondered about Jesus’ response or not, he chose to take a bold step and ask Jesus to just say the word and his servant will be healed.

I love verse 13: “And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.’ And the servant was healed that very moment.” That is so amazing! But it makes me wonder: are we truly believing when we pray for something? Are we truly believing that God is sovereign and will work in our lives for good? Are we truly believing that God will answer in the way He sees best? I want faith like that centurion.

What steps can we take to grow our faith? Sometimes we think that to grow our faith we need to do something crazy, but it’s actually quite simple:

1: Pray for faith. When you pray for faith, God will answer that prayer. Mark 9:17-29 tells the story about a man asking Jesus to cast a demon out of his son. He said, “But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us! (Mark 9:22b)” I love what Jesus says next, and how the father responds: “And Jesus said to him, ‘‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.’ Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, ‘I do believe; help my unbelief.’” And then Jesus heals the man’s son. God will not get upset at you for admitting that you have unbelief – He already knows that. God wants us to come to Him and ask for more faith, and He will gladly give it to us.

2: Learn more about who God is. Study God’s character throughout the Bible. The more you know about our awesome God, the more you will realize how trustworthy He is. The Psalms speak a lot about who God is, and would be a great place to start.

My prayer for myself and for all of us is that we would learn to have faith like the centurion. God is so awesome – why wouldn’t we trust Him? 🙂

With love,

Kelsey