Audacious Faith Pt. 2

“Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.”

Matthew 13:58

“Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.”

Mark 6:5

Both Matthew 13 and Mark 6 recount when Jesus returns to His home in Nazareth. Up to this point, Jesus has been healing, performing miracles, and drawing crowds throughout the region. Yet when He returns home, the results are underwhelming.

They say, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” The move of God that was sweeping Galilee was stifled at the gates of Nazareth. But why?

They thought, “We know this guy… there’s nothing that special about Him.” And this led to unbelief. Put simply: they had an over-familiarity that led to unbelief.

Notice that Matthew 13:58 says, “Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.”

Mark 6:5 goes further and says, “Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.”

Now, we know that God can do anything. So what does Mark mean by He could not?

God is omnipotent and omniscient. There is nothing that limits God except when God chooses to limit Himself…

In other words, God has chosen to—for the most part—only operate within the limits of what His people have faith to believe Him for.

God is sovereign and He does what He wishes. But, as a general rule, God will not move beyond the level of our faith.

So I ask us this question: what do we actually believe God can do?

A key principle to being a people of audacious faith is this: unbelief kills moves of God.

Notice that the passage doesn’t say that Jesus could do no works… it says he could do no mighty works.

When was the last time you saw what you’d call a mighty work of God through your life? If the answer is never or not recently, we should examine our faith.

Have we become over-familiar and thus stifled the mighty works of God in our midst?

I remember once being in a prayer meeting where an elderly woman prayed, “God, we’ve heard so many stories of revival but we’ve seen so little ourselves.”

I determined in that moment, “As much as depends on me, that will not be the story of my life…”

Perhaps you’d say, “I’ve seen the works of God.” But I would ask, “Have you seen the mighty works?”

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and say, “I saw God move. I saw the works of God. But the mighty works were few and far between.”

I want to live a life marked by the mighty works of God… So let’s raise our faith.

Did you miss Audacious Faith Pt. 1? If you did, I’d encourage you to go back and read it here…