Jesus Has Faith in You by Dan

When I was a youngster, around 6 years old or so, my father used to tell me stories from the Bible. Now, at the time, I didn’t actually know that these stories were in the Bible, or what the Bible even was for the most part. Pop just related the stories as a matter of simple fact most certain. And if they included miracles, well that was O.K. The question of plausibility never came up.

One of his early stories, and a favorite of mine, was of the disciple Peter walking on the Sea of Galilee. I don’t recall Pop using names, or identifying the body of water, but he told me about a guy who believed in Jesus so much that he walked out on the water just because Jesus told him he could. Well, Jesus and miracles just went together for me. That was long before I had decided to question miracles, and longer still before I realized that miracles were a certainty.

Peter walking on water? Perfectly fine. Peter sinking right into said water? Also perfectly reasonable. I think Pop must have been trying to teach me about confidence. He told me that when Peter realized he was standing on water, he lost his confidence and sank, even though he had just been doing it, and that Jesus still was. I figured that’s just what would happen to me, nothing strange here.

Fast forward a decade or two – or six. I was speaking to a young friend of mine. She had experienced a crisis of faith. Doubt was creeping in, questions were popping up. She was worried, not only about the problem she was facing, but also, since her faith in God seemed to be unraveling, about her very salvation. She felt that this business of doubting God was more than an “ordinary” sin of breaking the rules. It was like telling God to get lost, and just turning your back. How could God forgive that? Of course, I told her that God doesn’t work that way. I told her that doubt and questions and shaky faith were really common. I told her that it happens to me, and even to people stronger in their faith than I am (and there are plenty of those). But the, “Oh that happens to everybody” strategy did not seem very significant or material at that moment. And right then I remembered that story of Peter! Not the Bible version, not the sermon, I remembered my father telling me that story. And for the first time I realized what it meant – and I suddenly had my example – an answer for my friend. See, Jesus could have abandoned Peter at that moment. He could have said something like – “Well, if your faith is this weak when you’re an active participant in an occurring miracle, then forget you.” – as he walked on the water back to shore. But Jesus just said, “You of little faith … Why did you doubt?” For all Peter’s lack of faith, Jesus still had faith in him. We know that Peter was foundational to the creation of the early church, and indeed went on to perform miracles himself.

I told all of this to my friend. I asked her : If this could happen to someone like Peter, was her circumstance so terrible? And if Jesus would reach out and pull even Peter out of danger and despair, and overlook his doubt, why not her?

I’m pleased to say that I think it helped her, but I take no credit. That Bible story was there in front of me for a long time. It took the right question, and a story told to me years ago, to finally put it together at the remarkably right time. I’ve always thought that if something happened to me like happened to Peter, I’d never doubt again for the rest of my life.

I’m pretty sure I really don’t know what I’m talking about, though.