Show me your faith.

“I will show you my faith….” (James 2:18).

We tend to think of faith as something intangible, something ethereal, not unlike a foggy mist which when approached seems to recede into the distance.

The Lord can see our faith.

And so can you, once you stop to think about it.

When four men brought their paralyzed buddy to Jesus and ended up tearing up the roof to get him into the house, Scripture says the Lord Jesus “saw their faith” (Mark 2:5).

And so, “seeing their faith,” the Lord forgave the paralytic of his sins and then healed him.

It would appear from Scripture that our Savior has a hard time turning away from faith.

The faith of those four was on display by what they did.  Think of it. They joined together in a common venture of bringing their helpless friend to the Lord, carried him on a pallet down the road, and when no one in the crowded house made a move to let them inside, they lifted their friend onto the flat rooftop which they proceeded to tear open and to lower him inside.

It was an amazing display.

Anyone could see their faith.  Their confidence in the Lord Jesus and His ability to help their friend drove them to unusual actions that day.

What has our faith driven us to do?

“Show me your faith without works,” James says, “and I will show you my faith from my works” (James 2:18).

We show our faith by what we do.

A faith with nothing to show which would prove its existence is not one you would want to rely on.

And yet all around us people who have done nothing insist they have faith in Jesus Christ. People who have never professed Him as Lord and Savior, never identified with His people, never openly confessed Him, and never gone out of their way to help a neighbor or stranger in His name, are said in their obituaries to  have “gone to be with Jesus.”  By what right, one wonders.

Faith without something visible to prove its existence is not anything you would want to stake  your eternity on. Talk about blind faith!!

Faith in Jesus Christ–which means a confidence in Him causing us to trust Him–should make a difference. Among other things, a “saving faith” should be enough to…

–drive us to our knees in repentance and humility.  “Lord, forgive me. I am such a sinner and completely in need of everything, the whole works!”

–cause us to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. “You alone are my Hope, O Lord.  Without You, I can do nothing.”

–drive us to identify with the people of the Lord.  “They need me and I sure do need them.  I love these people, not because of what is in them but as a result of what the Lord has put in me.”

–enable us to rearrange some things in our lives.  There should be “some” evidence that Jesus has made a difference.  Did we clean up our language or clean out our computer?  Did we change our habits or change our reading material?  Did we quit indulging ourselves and start helping the needy?

Faith is a forever enterprise, as long as we are in this body living on this planet.  We will never be able to see all we would like, to know all that we question, and to have all we need for the work the Lord gives us.  In this body and in this world, we will always have questions and the occasional doubt and even fear now and then.  “We who are in this body do groan,” Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:2.

No one will do it perfectly so long as “we see through a glass darkly” (I Corinthians 13:12). But that must not stop us.

What true faith in Jesus Christ does, however, is it gets started.  It does not let the negatives paralyze us.

We bring our paralysis to Him.

One thought on “Show me your faith.

  1. One of the many things that I recall you saying……….driving across a bridge is having faith in the people who built it, yet people say that cannot have faith in something not seen. May not be your exact words but the concept stayed with me.

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