Constant prayer-a key to increasing faith

Someone once joked that you can tell people that there are five billion stars in the night sky and they will believe you. But put a sign that says "Wet Paint!" on a park bench and they will have to touch it to believe you. Why is it that we find it so easy to believe some things and so hard to believe others? Why is it that we find it easy to believe complete strangers but doubt those close to us on a regular basis?

It’s not surprising that Jesus faced a disbelieving audience when He went to teach in his native town. As human beings we find it so easy to not believe those whom we should be trusting and listening to. We also find it easier to take offense at those who are closest to us while letting much larger offenses at the hands of strangers go virtually unnoticed, or at least unquestioned. This must be one of those things of human nature we'll never understand.

But the questions for us today are, "Do we allow this to happen in our relationship with the Lord?" Do we feel we are so close to Him, and Him to us, that we miss what He is telling us or do we just fail to notice? Do we hurt our Lord by ignoring him? Or, do we sometimes actually take offense at His teachings?

That is what happened when He taught those who knew Him and the results were stunning: "He was not able to perform any mighty deed there."

Faith is the cornerstone of the effectiveness of the Lord in our lives. If we do not believe in Him, nothing miraculous can be accomplished through Him. Even among His own people, the Lord was unable to accomplish any mighty works.

How do we choose to limit the Lord? What assumptions have we made that, perhaps unknowingly, put limits to our faith? Maybe we assume the age of miracles has passed with the coming of the age of science. Perhaps we think that we are too unworthy to be invited into the power of the Lord. Maybe we assume that the world is too wicked, or people too stubborn, or a particular person too evil to withstand the miraculous intervention of the Lord.

We need to weed out the barriers to faith, to cast them aside. We need to find out what we think, that stands in the way of what the Lord thinks. And there is only one way to do this--prayer, constant prayer. Through prayer we begin to understand God and we begin to understand the limits of our own knowledge. When we pray for release from our own prejudices, the Lord will oblige in His time.