Lesson 15 Essential Connection to the Gospel
Questions 4 and 5
The difficulty we face is that, as I said above, we cannot manufacture faith, we cannot somehow just choose to believe. It doesn’t work that way. Faith is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9).
But thankfully God has made it so that we can get faith by asking Him for it. You might remember the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4. He said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water" (John 4:10). We can ask and He will give.
One day a man who had a demon-possessed son came to Jesus and asked Him to heal his boy. Jesus said, “everything is possible for one who believes”. The man said, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9:22-25). The man knew he needed faith: part of him did believe but he asked Jesus to help him where he doubted.
Jesus’ disciples also understood that they needed more faith, so they said, “Lord increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). Again they knew they needed to ask Jesus for faith.
So we’ve come to a very important subject, one that will connect us with Jesus and the gospel--faith.
Faith is like jumper cables that connect a dead battery to the necessary power source. Faith connects us to Jesus who gives us life.
I remember coming to understand this subject for the first time awhile back. I knew I needed faith and I knew Jesus could give it to me, so I asked Him for it. I just prayed, “Jesus, would you please give me faith to believe your gospel”? And He answered with a resounding, “Yes.”
Question 4. I want to give you a place to ask Jesus for faith, like the man with the sick boy did, or for more faith like the disciples did. Feel free to write out your prayer to God here:
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In the next lesson, I want to show you a story that illustrates the power of faith. I think you’ll see that faith connects us to the living God, and can even work miracles in our lives. That’s the power of faith!