“When I fall out of love, feel less passion, when my heart is darkened or depressed, when doubts fill my mind? I must start by rebuilding my hope.”
Laura Lane from ‘I Touch the Heavens’
Last Sunday I was teaching my Sunday school class and we were discussing Mark 9:17-30 and how we can use prayer and fasting to grow our faith.
First, we need a proper fuller definition of faith. I discovered that in general we use the word faith, and we mix it up with the words belief and hope and we use them interchangeably.
They are actually three different things.
I learned from Dr Jerome Groopman in his book The Anatomy of Hope that hope is when we have a beautiful vision of something, and a positive emotion go along with it. Hope is when we paint a beautiful picture of how we would like things to be, and it feels good.
But hope is not belief. Hope is a nice idea. Belief takes things to next level. When we look at the etymology of the word belief: Be comes from the word being and Lief is an Indo-European word that means love. It actually means to fall in love with something. When you believe something, you have fallen in love with it. So, you take that beautiful vision, and you’ve fallen in love with it, you now believe it.
How do we transform our hope and belief into faith?
If I find an acorn, I can have a beautiful vision that I want to have an oak tree in my yard. I have this beautiful vision of this oak tree and I’m going to put a swing in it for my children and my grandchildren to swing on. I’ll be able to sit under the shade of that oak tree, and I’ll be able to enjoy the leaves falling in the fall, and birds singing in the summertime.
I have this beautiful vision and I’ve now fallen in love with it. But while that acorn sits in my hand it will never turn into an oak tree. So what distinguishes hope and belief from faith? Faith is when I’m willing to listen to inspired wisdom, that would tell me what I need to do and then I trust that wisdom enough to act on it.
So back to that acorn. I talk to an arborist and an arborist will tell me. You need to plant it so many inches down in the ground. You need to cover it. You need to make sure that it’s watered and that it gets enough sunlight. You’re going to have to protect it from the squirrels, so they don’t dig it up. And as it begins to grow, you’re going to nurture it and water it and take care of it, and then it will grow into an oak tree. Next, I have to not only listen to that advice, but I have to trust it enough to actually take the acorn and plant it and follow through by nurturing it and serving that vision.
So how does this tie into the story in Mark when the apostles asked Jesus why they weren’t able to cast out the demons from the boy? Jesus’ answer was they didn’t have enough faith and this type of miracle required prayer and fasting.
So how will prayer and fasting increase our faith?
First, what is fasting. Fasting isn’t just the practice of going without food all day. It the practice of putting aside our worldly mundane everyday chores and responsibilities – remember not too long ago the task of preparing food and eating took up a big chuck of the day.
If you could put aside that responsibility and take that time or the whole day to focus on the miracle you needed in your life, if you could spend the day in quiet contemplation, focusing on the beautiful vision you desired, seeing the big picture of possibilities and God’s grace to help you obtain it. Feeling His love for all involved in the miracle. Discussing the matter with God, listening to his advice on what to do next and being motivated to follow through. That is true prayer and fasting.
To me that is also the definition of growing your faith. But it requires taking that quiet time to focus and pray and listen and learn.
What miracle are you looking for in your life that could benefit from a day of quiet contemplation? A day of prayer and fasting to see what miracles God has in store for you.
“Peace comes from having divine guidance and inspiration—connecting to the Divine.”
Laura Lane from ‘I Touch the Heavens’