Raised faith 'ceilings'

Our church has a short-term missions team in India, and this is a report we recently received:

"We left Kachhwa around 10 a.m. today. For the past two days I've been rooming with two reporters from Christianity Today. They spent the last 1.5 weeks touring India and doing dozens of interviews. I asked what their main conclusion was. The main writer . . . said it is clear to everyone that the social and religious fabric of India is changing dramatically. The gospel is going out to large numbers of people and the old systems are fraying. It is clear that the Holy Spirit began a new work here about eight years ago when the receptivity to the gospel first became highly noticeable. Now, in some quarters it is moving forward at a geometric progression rate. Huge growth. . . ."

The movement of the Spirit in India is the big story here, but it is not the facet I wish to bring to your attention in this column. I am going to take a more subjective turn and talk about what this news does to me personally. When I read the report, it enlarged my faith; it increased my level of expectations of the Lord's power, and my sense of the dimensions of His will for kingdom expansion.

Here is my main point: Testimony always raises personal faith "ceilings." Any time a testimony of God's power is shared, it has the effect of bursting through the subjective level of what is possible with God, and lifting it a bit higher. Even if just by a small or ineffable degree, whenever we hear of a wonderful work of God in a fellow believer's life-whether it is a lifelong homosexual who is now free, or a "hopeless" marriage that has been brought back by unrelenting prayer, or a whole region in India transformed by the gospel-our concept of how big God is grows.

The sobering side, I believe, is that we are now held responsible to this new level of faith or new "ceiling." We cannot go backward but only forward. With hearing comes responsibility; Jesus said it everywhere (John 9:41; 15:24). He was harder on the apostles' unbelief after they had seen him multiply loaves and fishes-two times (Mark 8:14-21). We must live up to what we have seen, and make it the springboard to even greater degrees of faith.

Another corollary is that it is important for us to have testimonies. But how can we have testimonies unless we press in to believe for more? And how can we believe for more unless we hear testimonies? There is a reciprocal dynamic to all this. Let us live so as to open ourselves to God's releases of power. Nothing sensational, just the garden variety practices of praise and obedience in the micro-matters of the day. God is pleased to release His divine resources on such.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.