Week 37 Matthew 21
These two verses caught my attention: if you have faith and don’t doubt you can do things like this (the fig-tree-miracle) and much more…If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
So there’s Two Guarantees:
Guarantee #1: I can get the ability to do miraculous things
Guarantee #2: I can get everything I ask the Lord for.
Pretty good guarantees…but I notice three things that have to happen first: 1) I have to have faith. 2) I have to not be a doubter. 3) I have to believe.
Looking at the three I figure that ‘faith’ in verse 21 is roughly equal to ‘belief’ in verse 22. So I’ve got Faith / Belief on one side. And on the other side is Doubt.
I visualize two continuums:
First there’s the Faith/Belief Continuum…
Almost No Faith —————————- A Lot of Faith
Second there’s the Doubt Continuum…
Almost Total Doubt ————————- No Doubt At All.
I think the Lord is saying that two (similar) things have to be going on at the same time for the Two Guarantees to happen. I have to be gradually moving along both lines from left-to-right: Boosting my Faith and at the same time Off-loading my Doubt.
This is useful to know. Matthew’s two continuums explain what’s needed so I can achieve the Two Guarantees.
Unfortunately Matthew doesn’t explain the process of how to boost my faith or tamp down my doubt.
So I’ll need to be looking somewhere else for those How-Tos.
Note: quotes from Matthew 21:21-22 (NLT)