Today we started studying Matthew 14 as a team, Jesus walking on water. But this post has absolutely nothing to do with that.
As I was finding the page in my Bible so we could begin reading the passage this morning, my eyes fell on Matthew 13:58:
'Now He did not do many mighty works [miracles] there because of their unbelief [lack of faith].'
And that reminded me of something God has been convicting me about for several months, which I'll get to in just a bit.
It's interesting to me that in Mark 6, the Gospel writer describes the same story of Jesus's rejection from his home town of Nazareth as Matthew does in chapter 13, saying:
'Now He could do no mighty work [miracles] there...because of their unbelief [lack of faith].'
Did you see that? He couldn't do miracles because of the unbelief of the people there! God! God couldn't do it! Now, that's offensive. My God can do anything. He is SO powerful (as we can see in 1 Kings 18 where He sends fire down from Heaven, which I have yet to write a blog post about...). But Mark says He couldn't do it. What??
Several years ago I came across an interesting portion of Psalm 78 which struck me in the same way:
How often they provoked Him in the wilderness,
And grieved Him in the desert!
Yes, again and again they tempted God,
And limited the Holy One of Israel.
They did not remember His power...
The Psalmist says that the Israelites in the desert limited God through their unbelief. They provoked Him, they grieved Him, they tempted Him, they limited Him, they did not remember His power. Wow.
Now, God is God and I believe, as He is completely sovereign, if He wanted to do mighty works in Nazareth, He woulda done. Same with His power in the wilderness. But, I can kind of understand why He wouldn't want to...
I mean, how would you feel if someone you loved so much continually said to you, 'Yeah, I don't really believe you're gonna do what you said you're gonna do. I don't see it. It's not gonna happen. You've never done anything for me anyway, really. You just got me into a mess and here I am. You can't get me out of here. You can't help me. Actually, forget you. I can't even really be bothered with you anymore.' After a while of hearing that, you might just let that person go...
But of course God is totally committed to the Israelites so He didn't let them go; He did what any loving father would, He disciplined them.
And they certainly missed out. I can't even imagine what it might have been like had the Israelites taken God at His word and trusted Him to deliver them as He said He would. They would have saved themselves 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. The entire first generation that was denied access to the Promised Land could have entered in. They could have tasted and seen that God is so good, but instead, they chose to believe what their eyes and ears told them rather than what God had said to them.
And all I know is that I don't want to be like that. This is my conviction. I don't want Jesus to walk away from me saying 'I can't do anything here because you don't believe Me.' I don't want to miss out on the great things God has for me, on the things that only God can do in my life, because I choose to trust my senses rather than my spirit. I'm not willing to suffer unbelief and miss out. His plan for my life is too good and too big for that.
So I choose to believe. I choose to believe that God has amazing things for me, that He is all-powerful and can put me anywhere and with anyone He wants to, that He can use me in mighty ways that only He can explain, and that He can and will be glorified in my life. He is my centre. He is my all-in-all. He is my Alpha and Omega, my beginning and end. Without Him I am nothing. With Him I am unstoppable. I want His power to be seen in my life. I want Jesus, and Jesus alone, glorified in my life. Therefore, I choose to believe.
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