The Faith Trap

It is sickening how much bad teaching passes as good theology. I’ve had more than my share of well-meaning Christian people come across my path who are guilt ridden because they didn’t have enough faith to get God to do something on their behalf. These dear people took their problems to the reported heroes of healing, the professors of powerful praying and the defeaters of the devil and were prayed over, laid hands on and anointed with oil only to walk away with the same problems they came in with. What was the glitch? Many times I have heard that the fly in the ointment was that somebody didn’t have enough faith and that somebody is usually the person who needed the miracle. Isn’t it convenient that if the miracle comes we give praise to the healer but when the miracle doesn’t come it’s never the healer’s fault, it’s our fault for not believing hard enough? There is a flaw in that kind of thinking.

One would have to look no further than the New Testament to see that Jesus touched everybody that came to him without there being a “faith test.” It seems that the needed amount of faith was to simply show up, or to reach out or even to let friends transport them to Jesus. The power was in Jesus, not in some magical amount of faith. Even people with little or no faith saw Jesus do some pretty spectacular things. Even when Peter’s faith failed while walking on the water it resulted in Jesus still reaching down and saving him. I figure that if you have enough faith to bring your issues to Jesus you’re on solid ground.

Even when Jesus said in Mark 11:23 “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” he doesn’t lay the guilt trip of “you don’t have enough faith so that’s why you’re still sick.” If that healer is so powerful his faith should be able to move that mountain. It is usually those who are in the midst of suffering who are struggling with faith in the first place and for some healer to condemn them for lack of faith is ridiculous.

I am in no way discouraging you from seeking a miraculous touch or having someone pray over you but I am releasing you from the condemnation and the guilt that someone may lay on you by telling you that you “didn’t have enough faith” when the miracle doesn’t come. In fact, real hard-nosed faith begins when miracles don’t happen on demand. The kind of long term faith that fights through discouragement and finally sees victory in the end.