Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

We’re wrapping up our What Faith Can Do series today. It’s a short series. Just two weeks long. But it’s a powerhouse. If you were here last week, you know what I’m talking about. Last week I witnessed one of the most powerful moves of God that I’ve seen in a long time. If you weren’t here, I’ll be honest…I’m not sure I can really describe what happened other than God blew the roof off of this place. People moved toward God in faith, believing that God can do the impossible.

Owning a strong faith is not an easy thing to do. It’s incredibly difficult. I bet all of us have asked some of the questions we saw in the bumper video. God where are you? God, I just don’t understand. God, this is impossible.

But it’s in just those situations where the depth of your faith is truly revealed. Isaiah 7 says, “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.” (Isaiah 7:9b, NIV)]

In other words, faith is the only way you’re going to make it. This world is so screwed up. There is so much hurt and pain and disappointment. There are so many times when everything seems so uncertain. If you don’t stand firm in faith, you’re not going to stand at all. You’re not going to make it.

We’re in Matthew 8 in this series. We’re exploring an incredible scene that happened with Jesus and a man with leprosy. Let’s pray and then we’ll get right back into this story.

Matthew 8 says, “When [Jesus] came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. (Matthew 8:1-3, NIV)

This is an amazing story full of amazing things. This man had an amazing request. He asked Jesus to do the impossible: heal him.

Jesus demonstrated amazing power when He immediately healed the man.

It’s only three verses long, but this story is absolutely incredible. But if we look a little deeper…if we take it even a step further than we did last week…we see something else that was truly amazing about the faith of this leprous man.

He knew that Jesus could heal him, but he didn’t know if He would heal him. There is a pitfall that’s really easy to fall into when you’re reading stories like this in the Bible. In the span of just three verses, we see this guy asking to be healed and Jesus performing the healing. So it’s easy to think that this guy knew how his story would end. It was easy to ask Jesus for this healing because he knew what was going to happen.

No he didn’t. Look at verse two again. “A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Today, we’re talking about the other side of the faith coin. Last week, we saw that faith believes that Jesus can do anything. We don’t pray small, safe, sanitized prayers. We pray big, bold, audacious prayers. We walk through life with a holy arrogance. We are arrogant that our God can do anything.

This verse is such a simple, but powerful truth. “Nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37, NIV) If you want to live with a real, authentic, biblical faith, then you have to believe this. You have to own this. It’s not enough to claim to believe it. Lip service doesn’t mean jack. If you want to live with a legitimate, God-honoring faith, then you have to live this truth. Nothing is impossible with God.

That truth should change how you approach every problem you encounter. It should change your perspective on every trial or hardship that you face. It should infuse you with a sanctified arrogance. We talked about that last week. A person of strong faith walks with a swagger. Did you swagger through your week this past week? Or are you still tip-toeing or limping your way through?

Nothing is impossible with God. That simple truth infuses us with passion and power…with confidence and conviction.

That’s one side of the faith coin. Our God can do anything. Today, we’re looking at the flip side of the coin. Our God can do anything because He is all powerful AND He is sovereign.

God’s power means that He can do it. God’s sovereignty means that He gets to choose to do it…or not do it.

The leprous man didn’t need this explained to him. He got it. He approached Jesus in full faith and confidence that Jesus could heal him. He knew that Jesus is almighty.

But the man also knew that Jesus is Lord. He is sovereign. And so the man said, “If you are willing, you can make me clean. I know you can do it. That’s not the question. The question is will you do it?”

This is the toughest part of faith. Believing that God can do something, but not being sure if He will do something. That causes some people to view God as cruel and distant and unfeeling.

If God can heal me, why doesn’t He?

If God can rescue me, why doesn’t He?

If God can move that mountain, why doesn’t He?

Some people conclude that it’s simply because God doesn’t care. Clayton King said, “God loves you and God is for you, not against you. Need proof? JESUS is proof.”

God’s love for you was settled at Calvary. If you wonder if God cares for you…God died for you. How God feels about you was settled on the cross. If someone dies for you, their love for you is beyond question.

Ephesians 5 says, “…Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…” (Ephesians 5:2b, NIV) If you wonder if God loves you, you don’t have to look any further than the cross.

But…what do you do when the cross says that Jesus loves you, but your circumstances seem to say that Jesus doesn’t care about you? That’s when real faith shows its true strength.

Rick Warren said, “It takes no faith to trust God when He is obviously moving. Real faith is holding on & believing when God SEEMS absent.”

The leprous man approached Jesus with full confidence that Jesus could heal him. The question was would Jesus heal him?

The hard truth is that there are times when God chooses not to heal. There are times when God chooses not to move. And it all comes back to the very first word that the leprous man said to Jesus. “Lord.”

He recognized that Jesus is Lord. He knew that he had no power and no right to tell Jesus what to do. All he could do was ask.

Now, he asked big. He didn’t wuss out. He believed that Jesus could do what he had never seen done. He lived by faith, not by sight.

But coupled with that big ask was the realization that it was ultimately Jesus’ choice to act or not act. In this case, Jesus chose to heal the man. But He could have just as easily not healed him. Do you realize that for every person that Jesus healed, there were hundreds…thousands…that He did not heal?

James 5:11 says, “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” (James 5:11b, NIV)

Now, combine that verse with this one. In Exodus 33:19, God says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Exodus 33:19b, NIV)

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, but they are at His disposal. He chooses how and when to be compassionate and merciful, and when to withhold compassion and mercy.

That’s because He is the sovereign God. You might not like it. I don’t always like it. But that doesn’t change it.

“But wait a minute…I thought God is loving and kind.” He is. “Well this doesn’t sound loving and kind.”

You need to understand something about God. He is loving and kind, but His loving kindness isn’t His first priority. His glory is. God makes decisions based on what will bring Him the most glory.

Maybe you think that’s arrogant. He’s God, dude. You got a problem with it? Take it up with Him.

God’s will is to glorify Himself because the more glory He receives, the more people are drawn to Him and are saved by Him.

So here’s the deal. If healing you will bring God more glory, He will do it. If withholding the healing will bring God more glory, He will do it. And as the people of God, we’ve got to get to a point where we’re good with that.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who exemplified this more than my buddy, Dave Hubert. Dave is part of our church staff as our Minister of Involvement. If you know Dave’s story, you know how much the last few years have been a struggle for him. Dave was diagnosed with cancer from out of nowhere. And there was a time in the hospital when it wasn’t clear if Dave was going to live or die.

Here’s what Dave told me later. Dave got the point where he didn’t pray for healing. Instead, he prayed, “God, do whatever will bring you the most glory.”

Now, Dave didn’t have a death wish. He didn’t want to die. He desperately wanted to live. But he has come to the place in his faith where he could honestly say, “God, I want to live, but if my dying will bring you more glory, then I’m good with that.”

This is pretty advanced stuff. This is a level of faith that most of us haven’t reached yet. For most of us, our faith gets rattled when God doesn’t come through the way we think He should.

Ultimately, it comes down to our level of trust. Most of us trust ourselves way more than we trust God. If God doesn’t come through at the “right time” and in the “right way,” we just don’t trust Him to come through at all.

I’m not saying it’s easy. This is the hardest part of faith. The hardest part of faith is trusting God when God doesn’t seem to be coming through for you.

That’s exactly where I’ve been the last couple of weeks. I said last week that God’s timing for this series was perfect because there were so many hurting people in our church. I’ve been one of those people the last couple of weeks.

I received some news that rocked me pretty hard a couple weeks ago. I honestly felt like my legs were taken out from under me, and when I hit the ground, I didn’t exactly bounce. It was more like a splat.

Just being totally honest here…my faith tank was running very low. I was relying on the faith of my wife and the faith of our church staff to get me through. I was relying on their faith because I didn’t have much of my own. I felt like God had abandoned me.

That’s when I forced myself to remember what we said earlier. God’s love for me was settled on the cross. He has promised to never leave me or forsake me. And He’s made that same promise to you.

If that’s true, why is He not coming through for you right now?

Maybe He needs to teach you something. By withholding an answer to your prayer, God is building something in your character.

Maybe you are seeking an answer that is completely self-centered. It’s all about you.

The Bible talks about that in James 4. “You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:2b-3, NIV)

If you expect God to come through on a selfish, self-serving prayer, you’re going to be waiting a long time.

Maybe God isn’t coming through right now because He has something much better in store for you down the line. You just have to be patient.

Maybe you are praying outside the will of God. God never acts against His own will.

Job said, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2, NIV)

The book of Proverbs reminds us that, “Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21, NIV)

If you’re praying outside the will of God, God will never give you a positive answer to your prayer.

But maybe the reason God isn’t coming through for you can’t really be known. Maybe the only answer to your situation is that God is sovereign. I’ve given you some possible reasons why your prayers aren’t being answered in the way you want right now, but is incredibly arrogant to suggest that we always know why things happen.

There are some people who always feel like they have to have an answer for everything. Anytime someone asks a question, these people feel the need to respond with some wise, omniscient sounding answer. Honestly, there are times when these people just need to shut up. Sometimes when a person asks a hard question, the very best answer that we can give is, “I don’t know.”

I have people ask me the “why” question all the time. Why is this happening? I just don’t understand. Why isn’t God coming through? More often than not, I look them in the eye and say, “I don’t know.”

Some people think that makes me a pretty poor pastor. Maybe so. Maybe it does make me a poor pastor, but it also makes me an honest person. I’d much rather give someone an honest answer than a religious cliché.

But here’s the other side of the “I don’t know” answer. You may not know why this is happening right now. But eventually, you will.

Jesus said in John 13, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (John 13:7, NIV)

He actually said this to His disciples about why He was washing their feet, but there is a deeper principle that applies here. We may not understand what Jesus is doing, or not doing, in our lives right now. It might make zero sense to us in this moment. But understanding will come.

Sometimes we will live long enough to understand why a particular season in our life had to happen. Sometimes full understanding doesn’t come until we’re on the other side of eternity. But either way, understanding will come if we can summon the faith to just hang on.

Let’s go back to our story. We like how this story ends. It ends with the word “immediately.” “Immediately he was cured of his leprosy.” That’s how we always want God to work in our life. Immediately. We pray it and God answers it. Boom. Done.

We’re living with this in our house right now. Our son, Brock, is two-years-old. I love my boy, but we’re in the deepest part of the pool when it comes to the terrible twos. And part of this is his complete lack of patience with anything…especially when it comes to his food.

When he thinks it should be dinner time, he announces to everyone that he is hungry. He will say, “I want eat.” A few days ago, he walked up to me and said, “I want eat.”

I said, “I know, buddy. Dinner is almost ready.”

Guess what? He didn’t like that answer. He shifted from neutral to high gear and had a classic two-year-old meltdown. All because he wanted an immediate answer to his request.

Of course we’re nothing like that, are we? Heck yes we are! When we ask our Heavenly Father for something and it doesn’t happen immediately, we can throw a fit that will rival any two-year-old. I know. I’ve done it. So have you.

That’s what makes the story of the man with leprosy seem so unfair. He was hurting, but when he talked to Jesus, he got his answer immediately.

But hang on a second. How immediate was it really? Just think about this. This guy was an adult. We don’t know exactly how old he was, but we know he was a grown man. And he had most likely been suffering from leprosy for years. And, he had most likely prayed for healing many times before, but never received it.

From our vantage point, it looks like his healing came immediately. But if you were to ask him, he probably wouldn’t use the word “immediately” to describe his healing.

More than likely, he would use the word “finally.” “I prayed about this for years. I prayed for healing for years. And finally, I met Jesus. Finally I was healed.”

Yes, Jesus healed him in an instant. But that instant was years in the making.

Your instant might be years in the making, too. Maybe you’ve prayed the same thing a million times and God seems to be doing nothing. Pray it again. Don’t give up.

But also, you need to remember this. The man with leprosy didn’t just pray. He took action.

Verse 2 says, “A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Did you see that? This guy didn’t have a faith that was passive. His faith was active. Last week, we talked about all the cultural and legal barriers that this guy had to walk through just to get to Jesus…but he did it.

He didn’t sit around, doing nothing. He was praying, but his prayers were coupled with action.

For some of us, God is withholding an answer to our prayer because we’re allowing laziness or fear to govern our actions. Or, more accurately, our inactions.

For example, lots of people are dealing with a job loss right now. It’s a devastating blow that will definitely test your faith. And you should absolutely pray about it. But at the same time, you’d better get off your butt and look for a job! If you’re praying for God to give you a job while you are sleeping until noon, staying in your pajamas all day, and watching Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns…guess what? It ain’t gonna happen!

Steven Furtick wrote, “Faith is not an abstract theoretical proposition. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s substance. It’s action.

Most of my life I imagined faith as some kind of force field. And the way we talk about faith dematerializes it. By most definitions, faith is synonymous with hope.

The more I study Scripture, the more I detect a sharp distinction between hope and faith. Hope is a desire. Faith is a demonstration. Hope wants it to happen. Faith causes it to happen and acts as if it’s already done.

Faith is not content to want it really, really bad. Faith consults the drawings and gets busy building. Hope is the blueprint. Faith is the contractor.

Some of the things we’re believing God for will never happen in our lives because we stand in hope instead of walking in faith.”

A lot of times, prayer is simply an excuse for inactivity. We say, “I’m praying about it.” A lot of times what we mean is, “I’m asking God to drop it in my lap. I’m asking Him to deliver in such a way that I won’t have to do anything. I won’t have to take a risk. I won’t have to step into the unknown. I won’t have to do anything.”

If that’s you, don’t be surprised when God never comes through for you. The man in our story had to take action. He took incredible risks to receive his miracle. If he had stayed where he was and simply “prayed about it,” I don’t think the miracle would have happened.

But here’s the most important thing to see in our story. Last week, we saw how the King James Version of the Bible says that the leprous man came and worshiped Jesus. He worshiped Jesus before he ever asked Jesus to heal him.

That’s where we begin and that’s where we end. Worshiping Jesus as the sovereign God. He can do anything. And I honestly think He gets sick of our weak, small, short-sighted prayers. He’s desperate for followers who will go big, dream big, ask big. A ton of you asked big last week, and I believe that God will deliver big.

But here’s where we have to land on this…before we ask big, we worship big. We worship a God who is bigger than us. Whose purposes are bigger than ours. Whose glory is more important than ours.

In the book of Isaiah, God says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9, NIV)

Sometimes you might not get it. Sometimes the only answer is that God is sovereign. We can’t understand His ways. We can’t comprehend His thoughts. If we could, He wouldn’t be a god worth praying to. He wouldn’t be a god worth following. He wouldn’t be a god worth worshiping…because He wouldn’t be God.

But, even though God is so much higher than us…even though His understanding and wisdom transcend ours…the one thing that He wants us to know beyond any doubt is that He loves us.

Our problems and burdens seem to tell us, “God doesn’t care about you. If God cared about you, this wouldn’t be happening.”

But over all of that, the cross of Jesus Christ shouts, “I love you! I will never leave you! And whatever you’re dealing with…whatever trial and pain is weighing you down…it’s temporary. I have already conquered it. And ultimately, I’m coming back for you. You can’t even imagine what I’ve got waiting for you on the other side of eternity, if you will have the faith to just hang on.”

Mike Edmisten

Tags: faith, God's sovereignty, Matthew 8, trust, What Faith Can Do