Our Faith Muscle
We have spent a lot of time swimming in pools this summer. My youngest son particularly enjoys standing on the edge of the pool and jumping into the water. I will stand in the pool close to him and ask, “Ready?” He answers, “Ready!” and then jumps in as I catch him, cheering as I help him make a splash. One pool day we repeated the ready, jump, and splash routine over and over.
After several jumps, I turned to speak to someone and was startled to hear and feel a splash in front of me! I quickly reached for my son and lifted him above the water. He gave me a big smile and I laughed in disbelief that he jumped in without waiting for me to ask him if he was ready. Someone mentioned they could see my son trusted me enough to jump even when I wasn’t looking at him. Each of my son’s little jumps was an opportunity to build trust, trust that I pray will continue to grow and lead to “higher stake” opportunities in which he will also trust me.
I picture faith like a muscle that we can strengthen with small steps of obedience. God gives us opportunities to have faith in Him and obey, and those acts prepare us for bigger leaps of faith that He might ask of us.
The Bible shows us individuals and families whom God chose to strengthen their faith through their own small steps of obedience. For example, the Moses we read about in the beginning of Exodus is not spiritually the same Moses we read about in the following books.
Moses first meets God in Exodus 3 at the burning bush. God tells Moses to return to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let the enslaved Israelites go. Moses is apprehensive about this command. Returning to Egypt means returning to a city which he had fled because he committed a crime, and it would mean speaking in front of Pharaoh who was the most powerful human ruler at the time. Moses voices his doubts and fears to God, and God responds by reminding Moses that He is all-powerful above all and offering Moses’ brother Aaron to help Moses speak to Pharaoh. Moses takes a step in faith and goes to Egypt.
Much to Moses’ disappointment I’m sure, God does not free the Israelites in that first talk with Pharaoh. Instead, Moses and Aaron have to go before Pharaoh several times before God delivers His people. Each time Moses spoke to Pharaoh, each time he obeyed God’s commands in the land of Egypt, he grew his faith and trust in God. These exercises in faith then lead to Moses standing at the edge of the Red Sea with the freed Israelites behind him and an angry Egyptian army behind them. Moses believes God can save them, but how? God miraculously parts the Red Sea for them to cross and finally escape the Egyptians. Still, the sea crossing was also another opportunity for Moses to strengthen his faith as God then charged him with his next more difficult task: leading the Israelites in the wilderness.
Each of Moses’ steps in obedience and faith prepared him for the difficulty of leading the Israelites in the wilderness. His faith became stronger through each opportunity (we might say trial), and his life became an encouragement to future believers as mentioned in Hebrews 11.
Can you look throughout your life and find the opportunities God gave you to follow Him in faith? Can you search through those times and see where God was faithful?