Sermon: Faith & Healing
*We apologize that a couple minutes are missing from the beginning of this replay, but jump right in for the majority of the sermon!
Scripture Text: Luke 7
Quotes for Reflection
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off,’ you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.
Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams, Uncommon Gratitude
Doubt, on the other hand, is the mother of conviction. Once we have pursued our doubts to the dust, we forge a stronger, not a weaker, belief system. These truths are true, we know, because they are now true for us rather than simply for someone else. To suppress doubt, then, to discourage thinking, to try to stop a person from questioning the unquestionable is simply to make them more and more susceptible to the cynical, more unaccepting of naive belief. It is that doubt is the beginning of real faith.
J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Luke
All desire to see among Christians more good works, more self-denial, more practical obedience to Christ’s commands. But what will produce these things? Nothing – nothing but love. There never will be more done for Christ until there is more hearty love for Christ Himself. The fear of punishment, the desire of reward, the sense of duty are all useful arguments, in their way, to persuade men to holiness. But they are all weak and powerless until a man loves Christ. Once let that mighty principle get hold of a man and you will see his whole life changed.
Application Questions
1. How does Jesus’s interaction with the centurion and widow serve as an encouragement to our faith?
2. What doubts do you need to bring to Jesus this week?
3. Why is ‘faith alone’ such a precious reality for our relationship with God?