We finished the Sermon on the Mount yesterday here. My original thinking to do a bible study with a focus on Stewardship and Calling was not to go into minute detail, but instead to read a chapter a day and share my reflections on that chapter as it related to Stewardship and Calling. You can read about this original idea in the posts on 1/9, 1/12, 1/14, 1/16, 1/20, & 1/22 introducing this study. However, I felt the S.O.M. was important enough for us to dig deeper. Today, we’ll return to the study of a chapter where I’ll share my thoughts and hope that you fill in your thoughts and revelations on this chapter so that together we can produce a complete study on Stewardship and Calling for anyone in the world who wants to access it.
Matthew tells several stories of Jesus’ ministry and several things stand out to me; most of them are about Faith. Faith is not only the key to accepting the grace of God through Christ for salvation. It is also the key to accepting His grace into our lives in greater and greater capacity that it can transform every area of our lives. If we want more and more of God’s blessing to show up in different areas of our life…Faith in Him for this is a very important ingredient.
- The man healed of leprosy had the faith to know Jesus could heal him and the faith to ask Him to.
- Jesus was amazed at the faith of the Centurion whose belief was greater than the Israelites. This belief was rewarded with a greater miracle than most of them saw. Not only this, but Jesus saw a sign Himself in the faith of the Centurion and taught that those who had been fortunate in their birth to be among God’s people would be thrown out for lack of faith, while those outside would come into Him through faith. This Centurion’s faith was so great, he is immortalized as a picture of all of us who would come into his body through faith.
- There’s an interesting contrast to his disciples two stories later when those who had followed Jesus every day did not have the faith to believe that He could quiet the storm. Those who believed in Him, didn’t believe in Him as much as they should have to impact every area of their life. They had no problem believing that He could cast out demons or heal the diseased because they had seen Him do these things. But when it came to quieting a storm, they didn’t have faith. Jesus had to demonstrate to them over and over again His power to affect all things so that they could grow the faith to live their callings.
In what areas of your life do you not have the faith to turn over to Christ and trust that He can do amazing things? Do you think that if you would give this area of your life to Him, that He could transform this area of your life? Why not try?
What else can you add to this discussion? I didn’t even touch two of the stories here. You could add in a way that I can’t that would really bless someone else. I hope you will.