As I said before, a lot of my bible journal entries are based on devotions from our minister, Jim, on Facebook. This is one of those. My last post, “Attacked”, was about how I was going through a rough time. I looked back at when I wrote that, and found the following devotion from the day before (link in comments). I think on top of all my other stress, I was feeling a lot convicted. Here’s what I wrote:

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And He said him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who followed Him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith…”

Matthew 8:7-10

God’s at it again, showing me things I know I’ve seen before in a new light. Jim challenged us to think about what God would say about our own faith.

It’s human nature to want physical evidence; our culture tells us that it’s necessary. What astounds me here is that Jesus speaking healing is good enough for the centurion. He doesn’t need Jesus to be there physically to heal his servant – he knows that if He says He’s going to, it’s already done. Why can’t we be more like this? Why can’t we rest more assured that Jesus is going to move, simply because He said He would? That is literally the definition of faith.

Another thing I noticed is that the centurion humbled himself. He realized that even though he was a “man under authority, with soldiers under [him],” that he wasn’t worthy of Jesus coming to his house. But, he recognized the power Jesus had and trusted His promises. In our culture, we are told that we deserve everything simply because we exist. In reality, the only thing we deserve is death, because we have sinned. But God made a way for us to escape that death; He sent Jesus to die for us so that we don’t have to. None of us are worthy of Jesus, but He’s there for us anyway.

That last verse gets me every time I read it now: Jesus, the son of God, who made all and is in all and knows all, marveled at a man’s faith. That doesn’t even compute with me really, but man do I want Jesus to marvel at my faith. I want to just trust He will do something because He said He would. I want to be humble and remember that I don’t deserve anything He gives me – but He gives it to me anyway.