Mrs Ojo was fifty-eight when she finally decided to learn to swim. She had spent thirty years as a teacher and then vice-principal at a secondary school in Ibadan, and she was not used to being bad at anything. But her grandchildren had started swimming lessons, and on a family holiday she had stood at the edge of a hotel pool in her wrapper, watching them splash, unable to join them. That was enough. When she got home she booked lessons for Saturday mornings at a sports club near her house.
Her instructor was a patient young man who had taught everyone from toddlers to retired generals. He told her that the first thing she would learn was not swimming at all. It was floating. “If you can float,” he said, “you can never drown. Everything else comes after.”
It sounded simple. It was the hardest thing she had ever tried to do. The moment she leaned back into the water, every muscle in her body tightened. She held her breath. She arched her neck to keep her ears dry. She kicked and paddled with her hands, trying to hold herself up, and the harder she worked, the faster she sank. Within seconds her feet would find the bottom again and she would stand up, coughing and furious with herself.
“Madam,” the instructor said on the third Saturday, “you are fighting the water. The water wants to carry you. You are trying to do its job.”
She looked at him as though he had said something absurd. Every instinct she had told her that if she stopped working, she would go under. She had been holding herself up her whole life. Nobody had ever carried her.
PunchlineI know many believers who relate to faith the way Mrs Ojo related to the water.
When faith becomes another burden
For a great many Christians, faith has become a kind of pressure. They have been taught, rightly, that faith matters enormously. Jesus said, “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22). Hebrews says that “without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6). But somewhere along the way, the emphasis has shifted from the God in whom we trust to the act of trusting itself. Faith has become something we must produce, maintain and constantly measure.
You can recognise this kind of faith by how tiring it is. A believer facing a serious need prays, and then immediately begins to examine herself. Did I really believe when I prayed? Did a doubtful thought slip in? Did I say something negative to my sister on the phone? Have I cancelled my answer? She monitors her inner state the way a nervous driver watches the fuel gauge. Every anxious moment feels like a leak. The need was difficult enough on its own. Now she is carrying the extra weight of managing her own believing.
In some circles, this pressure is made worse by the way faith is taught. If the healing does not come, the sick person is told that she did not have enough faith. If the business fails, the businessman is told he must have spoken a negative confession. A suffering believer ends up carrying the blame for her suffering on top of the suffering itself. That is cruel, and it is not how Jesus treated people.
Look at how He responded to a father who brought Him a son tormented since childhood. The disciples had tried to help and failed. The father was at the end of himself:
And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
“If thou canst do any thing.” That is hardly a confident prayer. The father is not even sure Jesus is able. Jesus turns his words back to him: “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” And the man’s answer is one of the most honest sentences in the Gospels: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
That was a mixed, trembling, half-formed faith. The man admitted his unbelief out loud, in front of everyone. And Jesus healed his son. He did not demand that the father first get his faith into perfect condition. He received the little faith that was offered, and He supplied the rest.
Faith rests more securely when its object is clear. We hear what God has said and turn toward the One who is faithful. And we can ask Him to help the very weakness we are tempted to conceal.
Faith looks at the One who promised
Paul holds up Abraham as the great example of faith, and it is worth noticing exactly what he praises:
Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
Abraham’s situation contained nothing that could produce what God had promised. He was about a hundred years old. Sarah had been barren all her life and was long past the age of childbearing. In natural terms, there was no hope. “Who against hope believed in hope.” His hope did not come from the circumstances. It came from the word God had spoken: “So shall thy seed be.”
Notice where Abraham’s strength came from. “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” He was fully persuaded about God, about the faithfulness and power of the One who had promised. Paul says nothing at all about Abraham’s capacity to believe hard enough or the strength of his feelings. His faith was strong because it was resting on something strong.
Go back to the night the promise was first given. God “brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be” (Genesis 15:5). God did not tell Abraham to look inside himself and try to feel more certain. He took him outside and gave him something to look at. Every time Abraham saw the night sky after that, the promise was written above him. “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Faith was Abraham looking up at what God had said, rather than down at what he could produce.
Hebrews says the same about Sarah: she “judged him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11). That is what faith does. It forms a judgement about God’s character and leans its weight there. It is not an inner muscle we must keep flexed. It is a conclusion about who God is.
There is an interesting detail in verse 19. The King James Version, following the Greek manuscripts available to its translators, says that Abraham “considered not his own body now dead.” Many modern translations follow other manuscripts which read that he did consider his body, that he faced the fact squarely. Either way the point is the same. Abraham was not pretending. He knew how old he was. He did not have to deny the facts in order to believe. He simply refused to let the facts have the final word over what God had said.
That is important, because this passage is sometimes turned into advice never to mention a problem. Biblical faith has room to recognise facts. Its distinctive act is to place those facts before the God whose promise is greater than human ability. Abraham’s faith was not a refusal to look at his body. It was a refusal to let his body define what God could do.
Speak the word only
The Gospels record Jesus marvelling only twice: once at the unbelief of His own home town, and once at the faith of a man who was not even an Israelite. He was a Roman centurion, an officer of the occupying army, stationed in Capernaum:
The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man , Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it . When Jesus heard it , he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
Jesus had offered to come to the centurion’s house. But the centurion said there was no need. “Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” Then he explained why he believed this. He was a man who lived with authority every day. He received orders from those above him and gave orders to the hundred soldiers beneath him. When he told a soldier to go, the soldier went. He did not have to walk alongside him to make sure. His word carried the weight of the authority behind it.
The centurion recognised the same thing in Jesus, on a far greater scale. If Jesus spoke, it would be done. Distance did not matter. Presence did not matter. The word was enough.
Notice what the centurion did not do. He did not try to work himself into a state of certainty. He did not ask Jesus to tell him how much faith he needed. He did not keep checking his own heart. He simply understood that Jesus’ word had authority, and he rested his whole request on it. And Jesus said, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” Then: “Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour” (Matthew 8:13).
That is faith at its simplest. Great faith, in Jesus’ estimation, was not great emotional intensity. It was a clear recognition of the authority of His word, and a willingness to go home on the strength of it.
NuggetGreat faith, in Jesus’ estimation, was not great emotional intensity. It was a clear recognition that His word carries authority, and a willingness to go home resting on it.
When the apostles once asked Jesus to increase their faith, He answered, “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root” (Luke 17:6). A mustard seed is tiny. Jesus was telling them that the size of their faith was not the issue. Even a very small faith, placed in a great God, accomplishes what no amount of straining could.
The word does the work
Why is it enough to rest on God’s word? Because God’s word is effective. It carries His power to accomplish what He says. God explained this through Isaiah with a picture every farmer in the world understands:
For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
When the rains come in the wet season, the farmer does not make the ground absorb the water. He does not force the seed to sprout. The rain comes down and does what rain does. It soaks the soil, wakes the seed and in time produces a harvest, seed for next year’s planting and bread for the table. The farmer’s part is real. He has to prepare the ground and plant. But the life is in the rain and the seed, not in his effort.
“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void.” The power is in the word. When God speaks, His word goes out like rain and accomplishes what He sent it to do. Our part is to receive it the way good soil receives rain. That is what faith is: receptivity to a word that carries its own power.
This is why Paul says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). Faith is not manufactured from within. It comes from outside us, from hearing what God has said. If you want more faith, do not stare at your faith. Listen to God’s word. Read it, hear it preached, meditate on it, let it soak into you like rain into dry ground. Faith grows as a natural response to a trustworthy word.
The Psalmist prayed, “Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope” (Psalm 119:49). Notice where his hope rests. It rests on the word, and even the hope itself is something God has caused. That is very different from a hope we must keep pumping up by our own determination.
Facts, feelings and the promise
PunchlineResting in God’s word requires some care, because we can easily confuse three different things: the facts of our situation, the feelings we have about it and the promises God has actually made.
Facts can be named honestly without being promoted to final authority. A person may acknowledge a medical diagnosis and still pray with confidence for healing. She can take the medicine, keep her hospital appointments and listen to her doctors while trusting God. Receiving medical care is not a failure of faith. A man may recognise that his business is in serious difficulty and ask God for provision while also cutting costs, seeking advice and having honest conversations with his creditors. Telling the truth about a situation enables wise decisions. It does not reduce God’s ability to help.
Feelings are real and should be cared for, but they are not the measure of faith. You may feel anxious while trusting God. You may feel nothing at all. The father in Mark 9 felt a great deal of doubt. Feelings move up and down like the level of water in a tank. God’s word stays where it is.
And promises must be read carefully. A strongly desired outcome is not automatically a word God has given. “For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20). That is a glorious truth, but it applies to what God has actually promised. There is great freedom in being able to bring a desire as a desire, asking boldly, while leaving the details with the Father. We do not have to pretend that He has guaranteed a date He has not mentioned, or a particular outcome He has not specified. When we confuse our wishes with His promises, we set ourselves up for crushing disappointment, and we often blame our faith when the real problem was our interpretation.
What we can be certain of is God’s character. “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it?” (Numbers 23:19). He is faithful. He hears His children. He gives wisdom to those who ask. Those truths remain sound even when we cannot see the next stage of the matter in front of us. Faith rests there. And even when our faith wavers, “he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
A woman who trembled
Mark tells the story of a woman whose faith was anything but calm and polished. She had been bleeding for twelve years. Under the law of Moses this made her ceremonially unclean, which meant she was cut off from worship and from normal contact with others. Anyone she touched would become unclean too. She had spent everything on doctors, and she had only grown worse:
And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.
She came “in the press behind.” She did not come boldly to the front. She crept up through the crowd, hoping nobody would notice her. Her plan was to touch His clothes and slip away. And when she touched Him, she was healed immediately.
But Jesus did not let her slip away. He turned and asked who had touched Him. And then Mark tells us that “the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth” (Mark 5:33). Fearing and trembling. This was not a woman with serene, untroubled faith. She was frightened. She did not know how He would react to an unclean woman who had touched Him in public.
And how did Jesus respond? “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague” (Mark 5:34). He called her daughter. It is the only recorded occasion on which He addresses an individual woman this way. He called her trembling faith faith. He gave her peace. And by bringing her forward publicly, He restored her to her community as well as to health. Everyone now knew she was clean.
Her faith was real, but it was small and frightened. What made it effective was not its quality but its object. She reached for Him. That was enough. If you are coming to God frightened, trembling, unsure of your welcome, you are in good company. Jesus does not demand calm before He receives you. He receives you and gives you peace.
An anchor holds the ship
The writer of Hebrews gives us one more picture of what it means to rest in God’s word. He has been speaking of God’s promise to Abraham, and of the oath God swore to confirm it:
Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.
God did not need to swear an oath. His word alone was enough. But He swore anyway, “willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel.” He gave us two unchangeable things, His promise and His oath, so that “we might have a strong consolation.” God has gone out of His way to make His word easy to rest on.
Then comes the image: “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast.” Think about how an anchor works. When a storm comes, the sailors on board do not hold the ship in place by gripping the deck. They could not. The ship is held by the anchor, which is fixed somewhere they cannot see, deep below the surface. Their job is to make sure they are attached to it. The holding is done by the anchor.
And this anchor, the writer says, “entereth into that within the veil.” It is fixed in the very presence of God, where Jesus has gone ahead of us as our High Priest. Our hope is attached to Him. The storm may toss the surface of our lives. Our feelings may rise and fall. But the anchor holds, because it is fixed in Christ, and nothing can dislodge Him.
Notice too the phrase “who have fled for refuge.” That describes people who have run to safety because they could not save themselves. Faith is not the strength of a person holding on. It is the action of a person who has stopped trying to stay afloat on her own and has fled to the place where she will be held.
It was the seventh Saturday when it finally happened for Mrs Ojo.
She had arrived tired that morning. It had been a long week, and she later told me she had almost cancelled. She lay back in the water without much expectation, and for once she did not have the energy to fight. She let her ears go under. She looked up at the grey morning sky. She let her arms fall open. She breathed slowly, in and out, the way the instructor had been telling her for weeks.
And the water held her.
She lay there for almost a minute before she realised what was happening. Then she started to laugh, which made her sink a little, and she had to settle back again. The instructor was standing beside her, grinning. “You see, madam? The water was always able to carry you. You just stopped interfering.”
She told me that story at church the following Sunday, still slightly amazed. “All those weeks I thought the problem was that I was not trying hard enough,” she said. “The problem was that I was trying at all. The water did not need my help. It needed me to lie down on it.”
God’s word is like that water. It is able to hold you. It was holding Abraham when he was a hundred years old and fully persuaded. It was holding the centurion as he walked home before he saw his servant healed. It was holding the trembling woman as she reached through the crowd. You do not need to hold yourself up by the strength of your believing. Lie back on what God has said. Let go of the pressure of trying to make faith work. Rest the full weight of your need on His word, and discover that it has been able to carry you all along.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- In what ways has faith become a pressure or burden for you? What do you find yourself constantly checking or measuring?
- Abraham was “fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” What would it look like for your faith to rest more on God’s ability than on your own believing?
- The centurion said, “Speak the word only.” What word from God are you being invited to rest on in your present situation?
- How do you distinguish between a desire you are bringing to God and a promise He has actually made? Why does that distinction matter?
- What encouragement do you draw from the trembling woman of Mark 5, or the father who cried, “help thou mine unbelief”?
This Week
Choose one promise of Scripture that clearly applies to your present situation, such as Isaiah 41:10, Philippians 4:19 or Hebrews 13:5. Write it on a card. Each time this week that you notice yourself anxiously checking whether you are believing enough, stop. Read the card aloud. Then say one simple sentence to God: “Father, I am resting on what You have said.” Do not try to stir up feelings. Simply turn your attention from your faith to His word, and then get on with the next responsible thing you need to do.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that my faith does not have to be strong to rest on a strong word. Forgive me for the times I have turned faith into pressure, trying to hold myself up by the strength of my own believing. Like the father in the Gospel, I say, Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. Teach me to be fully persuaded about You, as Abraham was, and to rest on Your word as the centurion did. When I come to You trembling, receive me as You received the woman in the crowd, and give me Your peace. Let my hope be anchored in Jesus, sure and steadfast, within the veil. I lie back on what You have said. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.