Walking Your Faith - Crosswalk the Devotional - May 11, 2016
Walking Your Faith
Ryan Duncan, Crosswalk.com Entertainment Editor
He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. ”– Matthew 17:20
Recently CNN posted an article about a young man’s spiritual pilgrimage. When Andrew Domini learned that a friend had recently been diagnosed with stage IV cancer, the 19-year-old college student had traveled 70 miles to pray at the shine of Catholic Saint, Theodore Guerin. Domini could have easily driven the 70 mile distance, but he wanted his journey to be a sacrifice, so he chose to walk instead. The journey took him two days. He arrived with feet blistered and bloody, but as he prayed over the remains of the Catholic Saint, Domini said he finally felt at peace.
Now here’s the interesting part, Andrew Domini isn’t Catholic, and when asked he admitted to mixed feelings about the Church. Reading this story, I couldn’t help but be struck by the boy’s similarity to the Roman centurion from Luke 7,
“When Jesus had finished saying all this in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." So Jesus went with them. He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."- Luke 7:1-9
I have to admit, I felt pretty ashamed after reading that article. Here was a boy willing to make sacrifices in order to pray to a God he barley understood, while my prayer life consists of a few garbled words before falling asleep at night. Andrew Domini spent two days walking 70 miles to reach a place of worship, while I struggle to make the five minute drive to Church every Sunday. It is so easy to become complacent in our faith, to make it such a part of our daily ritual that we end up forgetting God. But God wants more from us than our hollow actions and lifeless obedience; he wants to be the center of our lives.
Being a true Christian means living with a passion for God, and a willingness to go the extra mile. It means living with vision, and not settling for the bare minimum your faith requires. It’s seeking to know an unfathomable God, and realizing that He will always have something new He wants to teach you.
Intersecting Faith and Life
When was the last time you sacrificed something for God?
Further Reading
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