A Public and Persistent Faith - Luke 8:40-56

And ask for the sweetness of your presence.

We ask, Lord Jesus, for your Holy Spirit to illuminate your word for us.

We ask, Lord Jesus, that you would comfort us and convict us, bind us together, give us hope, give us joy, give us thankfulness.

We love you, God.

We don't take you for granted.

Jesus' name, amen.

Welcome to Skyline Church.

My name's Adam.

I'm one of the pastors here today.

I say here today, but I'm the pastor, one of the pastors every day, so I'm I am a pastor here.

Um okay, I remember the first time when I felt like my faith was tested like at all.

So I grew up in uh a home that loved God, that took me to a church that preached the Bible.

I had amazing friends that loved God when I lived in the United States.

And it honestly, it was a pretty idyllic childhood.

Things went really, really well for me.

And, you know, I didn't really have the maturity yet to understand that that was because of decisions and kindness of other people versus things that I had done myself or deserved inherently.

And until uh I moved to Australia, my dad's job took us to Australia.

I was there like eighth, ninth, tenth grade, something like that.

And it was the first time I when I got to high school there, I was the only Christian that I knew.

And so everything switched.

All of a sudden, on a week in, week out basis, all my Australian friends whom I loved uh would challenge me all the time on my faith.

You believe this?

Why?

That's so stupid.

A, B, C, D, and E, see?

And I I had never like faced some of this kind of stuff before.

I I didn't really have great answers for it.

And and honestly, it's not like it was the hardest thing on earth, but you know, if you've never faced opposition or any kind of challenge for your faith before, like the slightest warm breeze is like, ugh, it's panicky, right?

And I remember one particular day, uh, all my friends wanted to go to the movie theater.

This is back when people went to malls to hang out.

We went to a mall.

And my mom and I looked up the movie that everyone wanted to see, and I remember thinking, here we go.

The nursing moms get to hear.

You hear us in there, guys?

Um I remember thinking in the theater, or like before I went to the theater, looking at this movie up, looking it up with my mom and being like, I shouldn't watch this.

And my mom was like, You shouldn't watch that.

And I was like, Yeah, I shouldn't watch this, but I still want to go.

She's like, Well, you could see a different movie.

And I was like, and like be alone in the theater by myself.

She was like, Yeah.

I was like, ugh.

And so I went, and we're all hanging out, buying tickets, and all my friends are like, Oh, this is gonna be so sweet.

And I was like, guys, here's the thing, I gotta go, I'm gonna go to this other movie.

And they were like, What?

Why?

And I was like, uh, because I don't think I should watch this movie because I don't want to expose myself to these things because I want to follow Jesus, I didn't say it that well, but like I said something stupider than that to them, and they were all just looking at me like, okay.

And I was like, so anyway, I think the movie that I went to go see instead was like G.I.

Joe, which I was deeply blessed by.

Just kidding.

Rich plot.

Um, and so anyway, it was really the first moment where I just was like ugh nauseous about having to be a public Christian.

And, you know, the movie ended.

I sat in there by myself, came out, hung with my friends, like nothing had happened.

But, you know, it in some ways, if if if I hadn't even been able to overcome an opposition that small, it would have been rightful for them to have asked me, like, well, are you actually a Christian, Adam?

Like, this is not, it's not like you know, your life's being threatened, you're just not gonna sit with your friends for 90 minutes, you know.

But for me, it was significant, even though it was a small challenge, because it was really the first time.

And if you want your faith to grow, you need to get ready for various challenges.

Challenges of various kinds.

And I really love this idea, particularly for if you're here today and you're not sure what you believe about Jesus, you're exploring faith.

Because sometimes when I when I talk to people in that position, sometimes I notice that they they feel kind of like a shame or like a guilt at the speed with which they're thinking about it, the pace with which they're working through these huge questions, the the speed with which they're processing through, should I follow Jesus?

Is Christianity real?

And one of the reasons why I love this topic here today, how sometimes our faith gets challenged, and that strengthens us, is because if you're in that position here today, you're not sure what you believe.

I just want to encourage you that that for you to go slow as you think about Jesus is to truly consider what it'll cost.

Truly consider what it'll mean.

And the more that you do that, and the more that you examine and ask the big questions and look for answers to them from God in the Bible, well, that just means you're prepared for if that if when the day becomes that you do decide to follow Jesus, you won't just get knocked over like a domino, right?

And so I just want to put you at ease, this this idea of a faith being challenged, even before you've accepted it, is something that God uses to strengthen people, especially if you're at the beginning of the journey.

And so today's text, this is exactly what we're going to see.

We're gonna see two separate people in one story, coincidentally.

It's pretty cool the way that Luke narrates this.

Um, one story, two different people whose faith gets challenged in different ways.

And so I'm gonna read the first part right now.

Um, it's gonna be Luke chapter 8, verses 40 through 48.

Luke 8:40–48

The first thing that we're gonna see is that Jesus encourages and challenges us to live a public faith.

Encourages us and challenges us to live a public faith.

Luke 8, 40 through 48.

I'll have it up here on the screen as well.

Now, when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him.

And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue, and falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was dying.

As Jesus went, the people pressed around him, and there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.

She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.

And Jesus said, Who was it that touched me?

When all denied it, Peter said, Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you.

But Jesus said, Someone touched me, for I perceive that power is gone out from me.

And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed.

And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace.

Can we just, like at the beginning of this text here, can we just bask in the glory for one moment about uh verse 40?

You know, Jesus has already begun to face some challenge and opposition from the Pharisees, but you know, he's just come off a crazy confrontation.

If you were here last week, the most kind of demonized person in the Bible and in Gentile, non-Jewish territory.

Now he sailed back across Galilee seemingly, and he arrives, and everyone welcomes him.

It's starting to become clear to all of Judea what Jesus is about, and they're excited that he's back.

For this brief moment, he gets the praise and welcome that he deserves.

And the story kind of immediately introduces this influential character, a guy named Jairus.

It says he's a ruler of a synagogue, which is a lot of authority and a lot of power.

And yet this leader comes up to Jesus and falls down at his feet.

We keep seeing this, by the way.

Last week we saw the demonized person do this.

Here's Jairus, a leading Jew of his area for his synagogue, falling down again before Jesus.

We just sang this song.

People are starting to really recognize the identity of Jesus.

There's something going on here, such that this keeps happening.

Jairus falls down.

Reason, his daughter's dying, he's desperate, he's desperate.

But then the story, right when you think it's going to follow Jairus, twists.

The actual main character, the first half, alongside Jesus, shows up.

It's a woman.

And she's had a bleeding problem for 12 years.

And when you kind of study, like the commentators taking guesses on what exactly her problem was, seems like most likely it was internal uterine hemorrhaging, such that there was just a constant flow of blood.

Now, what's worse is that it had been happening for 12 years, and she had spent everything that she had on doctors, and you gotta love how Luke tees us up in verse 43.

She could not be healed by anyone.

If you've ever experienced this before, the confusion of doctors who really want to help you, but there's just limitations, even in today's modern medicine.

That's her situation.

But it's actually even worse than that.

Why is it worse than that?

Because in the Old Testament, if you know about this, there's these things called purity laws.

And Leviticus 15 specifically addresses a person, a woman, who has like menstruation.

So during a certain part of a month, she would become ritually impure.

This is not the same thing as sin, right?

The purity laws in the Old Testament, they do a couple things.

One, they they sort of were a public health blessing to the people of Israel with mold and blood and death.

Like it would cause them to, like, if they would touch or come in contact with something like that, they had to go through some kind of ritual cleansing, a washing.

So that's part of what the laws did.

But the other thing that the laws did was they were symbolic.

Because in order to approach God in the tabernacle or the sacrificial system, you had to become ritually pure.

But one of the things that you find out if you read Leviticus 15 is that if she's perpetually bleeding, well, then she's perpetually unclean in the ritual purity sense.

Again, that's not the same thing as sin.

And so what that means is she's basically cut off from society in a really substantial way.

Because any piece of furniture that she touches or sits on, that has to then be washed according to Leviticus 15.

Any person that she touches, they then become ritually unclean.

So there's this all of a sudden, this really consequential thing that happens because of this specific illness in a way that isolates her from the community in honestly, a really painful way that you can only imagine how it affects someone for 12 years.

This is who walks up.

This is who we're talking about.

All this is simmering in the background as she acts with faith.

She sneaks up behind Jesus, which apparently worked, at least for a minute.

And she touches his clothes.

You see, in a different gospel where she reasons, if I could just touch his clothes, I'll be made well.

She touches his clothes, and uh she's made well, but then something unexpected happens.

Jesus stops and he goes, Someone touched me.

And Peter's like, Yeah, you're in the middle of a crowd.

And he's like, No, no, no, like someone touched me.

I felt power go out of me.

And what's interesting about this is he didn't have to do that, right?

Like he could have just been walking along, feel bare, maybe he didn't even feel it, like the actual pull of the cloak, but he feels power go out.

He could have easily just been like, oh, I don't know who you were, but bless you, go in peace, whoever you were, just in his mind and kept going.

Because remember, he's on a mission right now.

Jairus has just asked him, like, my daughter's dying, please come.

And he could have been like, Yeah, we can handle this later.

But instead, he does the literal opposite of that.

He stops and forces her out.

He forces her into the open.

What he's doing is he's challenging her to a public faith.

And when she's revealed, she also, in case you didn't notice this, falls down trembling before Jesus.

Keeps on happening.

Falls down trembling because she's scared.

Because, you know, I mean, the the reality is, is like in sneaking up behind Jesus, she touches him and according to Leviticus 15, would make him ritually unclean.

Which again, it's not the end, it's not sin, it's not like the end of the world, but it's definitely inconsiderate.

You know, like because if you had an engagement that night, you wouldn't be able to go because you'd have to follow the ritual purity laws.

And so she acts with faith, but it's kind of like it's kind of mixed a little bit because she knows that this is true.

And she's been living this life, and she comes up and touches him anyway, so it's not shocking that when he exposes her, she falls down trembling.

Something I think that we can all relate to.

Have you ever struggled to be public about your faith?

And I think that the main obstacle that we all face when it comes to having our faith be public is the same obstacle that she faced, which is fear.

I think that's the main one that we face as well.

And what Jesus is showing us as he's showing her, that your faith is not meant to be private.

Even though oftentimes, especially in American culture, you have like your work life, your family life, your religious life.

These are compartmentalized, segmented things that, you know, in proper conversation, you don't necessarily talk with other people about.

But Jesus is drawing out the opposite here, actually.

He's drawing her into a public faith.

This text is an invitation to us, to a public faith.

How interesting, and we didn't plan this, that as these passages flowed into like our schedule, that this idea of public faith comes to us two weeks before Alpha starts.

The lowest hanging fruit opportunity of the year for you to be invitational towards someone, whereby really putting your cards on the table.

Hey, this is a thing that my church does.

It's an 11-week class where we just ask the big questions and get to talk about them in a non-judgmental safe place, dinner, video, small group discussion.

What do you say?

You really do out yourself if you invite someone to something like that.

We're not pagans, we don't believe in luck.

Definitely not, Brian.

Where is your faith private?

Or maybe Jesus is inviting you to make it public.

But then, after she confesses, it's kind of like, ooh, man, she touches Jesus, Jesus draws her out into the open, there she is on the ground, trembling, like, woo, man, Jesus really challenging her.

But then he says something incredibly significant.

Verse 48 Daughter, your faith has made you well.

As it turns out, Jesus didn't want to just challenge her faith, which he of course did, but he also wanted to do something else.

He also wanted to strengthen her identity.

You know, this is the only place that Jesus calls someone daughter.

Think about what this means for someone who's been living on the outside of Israel for over a decade, and she sneaks up, gets healed, Jesus draws her out, and then he says to her, daughter, your faith has made you well.

Imagine what that's like to hear.

Imagine what that's like for someone to hear, for him to look her in the eye and seek to convince her that after all this suffering, all this isolation, she's still God's daughter.

He wanted to do a couple things by drawing her out.

He wanted to challenge her and strengthen her to a public faith.

And he wanted her to know who she is.

He wanted to look her in the face and tell her that she's a daughter of the living God.

And I wonder, who needs to hear that today?

She kind of approaches Jesus in a slightly questionable manner, right?

You compare that to previous weeks where the centurion, the Gentile centurion, who doesn't even necessarily believe in the Jewish faith, won't even let Jesus come into his house because he has so much awe and reverence for him.

Jesus is like, wow, I haven't found faith like this in all Israel.

Here you have someone towards the other end of things who believes with faith, but doesn't really want to be exposed by it.

Who needs to hear that even in questionable situations where we approach Jesus, that you are his daughter, that you are his son.

These are familial terms that carry a lot of meaning.

And he doesn't choose them randomly.

But then this beautiful moment gets interrupted yet again.

Verses 49 through 56.

Let's see how the story ends.

While he was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, Your daughter is dead.

Do not trouble the teacher any more.

But Jesus, on hearing this, answered him, Do not fear, only believe, and she will be made well.

And when he came to the house, he allowed no one to enter with him, except Peter and John and James, and the father and mother of the child.

And all were weeping and mourning for her.

But he said, Do not weep, for she is not dead, but sleeping.

And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.

But taking her by the hand, he called, saying, Child, arise.

And her spirit returned, and she got up at once, and he directed that something should be given to her to eat.

And her parents were amazed, but he charged them to tell no one what had happened.

This beautiful moment with the woman who's just been healed, who Jesus calls daughter, then gets interrupted.

Can you see the way that Luke?

You can imagine like a movie, the way that this gets cut.

Just as like the speed of it's just happening.

And this somebody shows up, Jairus.

You can imagine him.

Like he obviously wants to get to the house as soon as possible, but all of a sudden this woman shows up and Jairus watches her get healed.

You can imagine Jairus being like, Yes, this is about to happen to me.

This is about to happen to my daughter.

But all of a sudden, a setback comes.

A messenger comes and says, It's too late.

Your intentions were good, Jairus.

You did what you could, but she died.

I mean, this is about as big as setbacks to faith come, I think.

He was too late.

Maybe at that point, Jairus is questioning why they even stopped.

If the previous section with the woman was about a public faith, then this section with Jairus is about a persistent faith.

This is the second point.

Jesus encourages and challenges us toward a persistent faith.

And in case there was any doubt, verse 49 confirms it.

Your daughter has died.

These are as big as setbacks come.

And the reality is when we're talking about setbacks to faith, they come in a lot of different sizes.

They could be small, something that just happens in a day, medium, or really, really large, like this one.

All kinds of different setbacks.

For example, unexpected suffering.

Things were going well and all of a sudden they aren't.

Maybe you want to be married.

You start to date someone, it's going pretty well, but then the relationship disappears.

It evaporates.

Or maybe a different relationship with a friend or a family member or a spouse.

Things are going well, but then out of nowhere it decays and becomes bad again.

Or maybe you're a Christian, you felt like you were growing, you felt like you had purpose, you felt like you had direction, and all of a sudden things happen and you slip into apathy, you slip into directionlessness, and you're not sure why you're here, what you're doing.

All these types of things are setbacks in various shapes and sizes, where futility and faithlessness and doubt creeps in, or maybe it's like gyrus, where you think someone's gonna get better.

In fact, you're sure of it.

But then they don't.

Walking with Jesus in moments like this grows faith.

Our faith must face moments where you can't see how the path continues.

It must face moments where you have no ideas.

It must face moments where you think that the worst outcome is the most likely outcome.

This is how a faith becomes persistent.

But you know what's amazing about Jesus?

Is even if your faith fails in a moment like this, Jesus.

Don't.

First John, the way that it says this, a book in the New Testament, it says, when we are faithless, he remains faithful.

Like, look, here's the reality.

Like, by God's grace, a warm breeze of opposition hit me when I was 16 in that movie theater, and by God's power, I was able to overcome it.

But what if I wasn't?

What if I caved and went against my conscience, went against the conversation I had with my mom, watched something that influenced me in a sinful direction.

What then?

Well, when we prove to be faithless, Jesus remains faithful.

In fact, Peter, the one who questions Jesus when the crowd is pressing in on him, will later literally deny his relationship with Jesus.

I mean, talk about that's like the apex of faithlessness.

And yet, Jesus restores him and uses him.

Because even in a moment of failed faith, the Lord uses that.

Like if I would have, if I would have gone into that movie, I would have walked out just a little more clear on my maturity.

I would have walked out just a little bit more humility, on a little bit more understanding and honesty with my self-evaluation.

And then in that place of clarity, Jesus can enter in.

Because when we are faithless, he remains faithful.

And we don't really get insight into like how Jairus responds when this person says that his daughter's dead, because Jesus immediately intervenes.

Verse 50, do not fear, only believe.

And if you've walked with Jesus for any amount of time, you've probably experienced this before, where your faith experiences a setback, something that happens where you need to persevere, and you hear Jesus encourage you.

In the middle of something, he knows what you're going through, and whether it's through the collective encouragement of community or through your private reading and God's Word, as you seek him in prayer, or through the preaching of God's word, or just through other, some other means, if you walk with Jesus, one of the things that you will experience is in a moment where you need persistence, he will speak and build you up when you don't know what can happen or where it's going to go.

You know, I've told several of you the story about how I, how the Lord supernaturally healed me in January.

But the November before that, when I was in the pit of agony and despair, not sure what to do as things continued to get worse, as I sought God, and I'd limited myself at that point to ask God about it once a month because I didn't want to just complain about it all month.

And that was the morning in November where I'd asked God about it, and I asked him about it, and I felt like the thing that he said was, you're in the last lap.

And I was like, Am I hearing this right?

Like what is the last lap to you, Lord?

Like, is that like is that like a decade?

You know, like uh there's four laps in a mile, uh, 25 years?

Is that what we're talking about?

And so, but I just I didn't know, but I heard that.

And I was, I you know, I was probably 61% convinced that that's what I heard.

So it gave me some gas in the tank, and sure enough, 60 days later, he was right.

It all changed.

It all changed.

He spoke to me in the midst of a moment that required persistent faith.

And again, like I I can give you many examples of failed faith for me, but I just love the way that Jesus intervenes for Jairus here.

And he gyrus has to keep up the faith all the way to the room.

They're walking through this house, there's people wailing and crying, Jesus is saying things, people are laughing at him, and Jairus is kind of like, you can imagine just walking through this scene all the way to the moment where you get in the room with your daughter, who is literally dead, all the way up until that moment.

And it's at that moment that Jesus takes her hand and says, Arise.

And then the crazy thing is, maybe you saw this, it says, her spirit returned.

You know what that means?

She was actually dead.

Her spirit returned.

This persistence, you know, Jairus no doubt is walking through this for who knows how long with the sickness of his daughter, but in this moment where he approaches Jesus and Jesus is like, yeah, and he starts to go with him, maybe at max, maybe a 12-hour period, it seems like, where Jesus is walking with Jairus up to this moment with his daughter.

So you have short bursts where you need persistence.

Maybe the pain is really extreme and acute.

But then you have the woman at the other end with 12 years who's been walking through that with Jesus.

I mean, talk about persistence.

Like, that's like at the highest level, right?

And we are going to face all kinds of things like that, from 12 hours to 12 years and everything in between.

And afterwards, after we experience things like that, where we see Jesus work and our faith is vindicated, it transforms what we're capable of.

It's a gift from God that transforms what we're capable of.

Again, I think of George Mueller, who, if by the end, towards the end of his life, he's got 2,000 orphans in his orphanages in England, in Bristol, that he's caring for.

But you know, it didn't start that way.

It didn't start with 2,000 orphans banging their forks, waiting for breakfast, who knows where it's gonna come from.

George Mueller prays and it shows up.

It started 40 years before that, where he's walking around with his wife, sees a bunch of homeless kids, and is like, am I gonna do something about this?

And invites six into his house.

That's where it began.

And then as the years passed, as the decades passed, he became so accustomed to seeing his faith in God vindicated.

That doesn't mean we can presume on every single thing that God is gonna do, but it does mean that you expect, oftentimes, God to do stuff that you can't.

That's how Mueller, for example, ends up in a position where he's feeding 2,000 kids without having the food the morning of.

And then God provides.

And you know, the text ends with uh with Jesus going back to this thing that he does, where he tells people not to share.

Last week we saw the opposite, probably because the guy wasn't a Jew.

And Jesus is like, go tell all your friends in the city.

But now at the end of this text, we're back to Jesus telling people, don't tell anyone about this.

Why does he do this?

You know, we've talked about the way that Jesus, most likely, when he's telling people not to share what he just did, the most likely reason he's doing that is because he's trying to manage the amount of time he has.

He has a goal, he has a mission, he has to spend time with his disciples, raise them up, and then he's gonna die on the cross for sins.

And so he's trying to like manage his fame and his progress such that he has the time to do what he wants to do is the most likely answer to that, I think.

But again, it's not, he didn't have to do it that way, right?

Like, he could have just done less miracles.

He could have just been like, okay, guys, this week we're going back to Galilee and we're gonna walk in the power of God.

But instead, what he does is everyone who comes to him, he responds to.

Everyone who comes to him, he heals.

Why?

Because the good news of the gospel is that Jesus loves to save and loves to heal.

And he loves these private moments that aren't really doing so much for his public persona, but do a lot for Jairus.

He loves these private moments where he gets to deal with people on an individual level that isn't necessarily advancing his public perception.

In Jesus' gospel, he not only heals and saves sinners, but he builds up their faith into a public and persistent faith.

And I just love the way that the Lord Jesus, rather than doing less miracles, he does tons for all these people that he loves and just tells them, don't tell anyone about this.

You know?

It speaks so much to who he is.

And this last part, which I just couldn't resist.

Did you notice that the second half of the story, he touches another unclean thing?

Remember we talked about in the first half of the story, the woman with the continuous issue of blood, Leviticus 6.15, says that uh she would be in a state of uncleanness.

Well, Numbers 19, also in the Old Testament, describes that the same thing happens with death.

If you're to touch a dead body, you're unclean for seven days.

But Jesus overcomes this one as well.

And what's interesting, in both of these laws, if you pull them up, oh, we got some, we need to balance this bad boy.

Um in both of these laws, if you pull them up, contact with blood, with death, must follow a specific procedure.

Otherwise, here comes the highlight, you would defile God's tabernacle.

What is that?

The tabernacle was like a mobile temple that went around with Israel, that God's presence, it's his very self was in.

And what the law is saying is that if you didn't follow these particular purification procedures, that you would be at risk of defiling God's tabernacle, which by the way could end in death.

And you can read multiple stories in the Old Testament where that exact thing happens.

If we approach God wrongly, especially in the Old Testament here, with the laws in the Old Covenant, you could die from ritual impurity as you face the purity of God's literal presence.

So why does Luke put these two stories side by side?

Why does he have two stories that aren't just?

We know that Jesus can heal.

We also know, by the way, that Jesus can raise the dead.

So why does he put these two stories side by side?

Well, what Jews probably would have noticed is that these are both situations where the person was ritually unclean, the body of the 12-year-old and the woman with the continuous issue of blood.

So what is Luke saying?

What does he want us to see?

I think what he wants us to see is the God who was dwelling in the tabernacle has left it and come amongst us.

Instead of tedious purifying rituals, Jesus, God incarnate, comes to us and purifies us himself.

This is the Christian gospel.

You don't wash and then approach God.

He comes to you and washes you.

This is why this is different than anything else that's ever been told in the whole world.

Not you must clean up and approach God.

But God has done something and he's come to you.

And in any questionable circumstance, your faith in him can save you.

I think this is what Luke wants us to see.

He approaches us and makes us spiritually clean.

Disease bows to him.

We get another layer of paint on that.

We've seen it a lot.

Death bows to him, another layer of paint on that, we've seen it already.

And he makes us clean.

This comes through the gift of faith, which he helps become public and persistent.

And we're his sons and daughters.

Let's pray.

God, I just treasure these stories so much.

We see so clearly who you are and what you're about.

Lord, who who balances challenge and love and support like you?

Nobody.

Who changes people's lives by their power?

Lord, you said power has left me.

There's nobody who walks the earth like you.

And yet, as we'll see in the coming weeks, you give your authority and your power to your people to bring your gospel to the world.

God, thank you for raising that 12-year-old.

God, thank you for making that woman clean.

Thank you for your grace upon her.

Thank you for strengthening their faith by teaching them a public faith, teaching them a persistent faith.

Thank you, Lord, that even when our faith fails, you remain faithful.

Our salvation does not depend on how faithful we can be.

But any seed of faith, any seed of belief that you are who you said that you are, brings the gift of eternal life.

We love you, God.

In Jesus' name, amen.