This month, I’ve been sharing some insight in regards to faith: faith demonstrated in the Feeding of the 5,000, that we come to Christ Jesus for our wants and needs satisfied fully; faith that calms our fears and dreaded moments in life because Christ comes to us; faith that gets us up and going to be Christ-like in thankful response to God for His mercy and grace toward us; and today let’s put that faith to work!
While Jesus was traveling, He came upon a woman from Canaan. Because there was religious and social tension between Israel and Canaan, she was considered an “outsider” and because she was a woman in a man’s world, well, that didn’t help either. This may ring a bell of truth to you if you’ve ever felt like an “outsider” struggling to fit in or one attempting to be heard but drowned out by the crowd. You could be made to feel like a second or third class citizen. Teens might feel unwanted or rejected by their peers. Depression and even harmful thoughts of suicide may be present.
In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 15, we meet this woman who was meant to feel unwanted. She went up to Jesus, recognizing
His presence and His ability to heal, crying out: “Lord, have mercy on me; my daughter is oppressed by a demon.”
But Jesus didn’t respond and made to feel like a “nobody,” the disciples entreated Jesus to send her away because she was bothersome. There’s more, if you read the text from verses 21-26.
The woman comes with faith in God to meet a specific need and then her faith is tested to the hilt! We might get the idea that God is only for pastors and “strong” Christians; that God hears the prayers of church goers and tithers; that outsiders don’t count. The woman hears discouragement from Jesus’ own mouth: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel…It isn’t right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
But the woman, undeterred, undaunted, believing that Jesus would heal her daughter, lets nothing stand in her way outside of faith. And you might have heard it said that faith, the size of a mustard seed can say to a mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you (Luke 17:5-6).
In other words, faith that is measured as small, can accomplish big things as it trusts in God through Christ to do them. And Jesus commended the woman for her God-given faith saying, “You have great faith. Your request to heal your daughter is granted.”
How does that translate to us? Blessed with God’s gift of saving faith, we come to Him with our specific needs be they small or great, difficult to muster or impossible to handle. Our faith is tested when there is no apparent answer from God. Our faith is tested when others may resort to telling us that God’s too busy to answer; or maybe our faith isn’t strong enough; or we’re not good enough; or even more discouraging: “There is no God!”
My friends, that’s not true at all. God is with us. He is merciful and by His grace, His undeserved love toward us, we are able to persevere. Christ’s coming to us and His death and resurrection, bring us forgiveness, new life now and forever.
It’s not by our doing that we get but by Christ’s righteousness bestowed freely on us that we are “healed”; that no one is an “outcast”; that our prayers are heard and answered according to His way at His time because He has given us a faith that works. By the power of God’s Holy Spirit, without any merit or worthiness in us, we have a faith that works! And you can believe it for Jesus’ sake.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This week our contributor is Reverend Dean Rudloff, Life In Christ Lutheran Church (now located at 2017 West Hwy 61, Grand Marais), a church of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
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