Full of Faith

Acts 14:8-28

There are a lot of things that jumped out at me in today’s reading, but one of the most striking for me is in the end of verse 9, “Paul realized he had faith to be healed.” It’s impressive enough that Paul was able to notice the man’s faith. But more incredible to me is that the man had faith to notice. Did you catch that as they came upon this man with crippled feet, that Luke immediately informs us that he had been that way his whole life and had never walked? I don’t know how old the man was when Paul and Barnabas met him, but since he was a man, it seems to me he’d been crippled long enough that, if it were me, I don’t think I’d still be believing I’d walk some day.

I know the faith of the man isn’t the major theme of this passage, but it’s significant. Are there things in your life that you’ve decided to live with, or much worse decided to be embittered by, because you’ve lost the strength to believe God can work in that area of your life? Has God been trying to offer you a solution other than the means of healing you believed was the best solution?

It’s so easy to limit our hope and our faith to areas of our lives where it’s easier to imagine possibilities. Are their areas of your life or heart you’ve left for dead that can be restored by a miracle from God? Rather than praying for the kind of miracle we’d like, perhaps we should pray that in that area of our lives we might begin to live out our faith in a way that is recognizable.