And I pray that you…may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV)
Our pastor was preaching a sermon recently on “According to your faith let it be done to you.” (Matthew 9:28-30 NIV) His basic premise was that the more faith we have, the more we can serve, worship, give, grow, and impact the world for Jesus Christ. You’d never give a 3 month old baby the task of going to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk because they simply aren’t “big enough” to do so. But by the time that child has grown and can drive, they can certainly bring home that gallon. Similarly, if God can’t trust us with a $1000 task, then he won’t be able to give us a $1,000,000 task. But this led me to a strange question. How do you measure faith??
Measuring does seem to matter to God. We are told God is the one who can measure the earth.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? (Isaiah 40:12 NIV)
And we’re told that we need to be honest in our measuring of physical things.
Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. (Deuteronomy 25:13-15 NIV)
In the Bible there seems to be several things that only God can measure, like sin.
In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. (Genesis 15:16 NIV)
And faith.
When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. (Matthew 9:28-30 NIV)
And joy.
“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. (John 17:13 NIV)
The Bible is continually calling us to grow in righteousness. Grow in faith, in knowledge, in wisdom, in discernment, in ministry. Grow in joy! This type of growth isn’t as much quantitative as qualitative, at least from our perspective. I can’t give you a quantitative answer to how I’ve grown spiritually since 2020, but I can tell you my growth has been substantial – and qualitative. I can’t measure it in quarts or meters or pounds, but I can know that it has increased. Do I have enough faith for a $1,000,000 project? I have no idea. But I would like to think I’m past the $10 and $100 faith, hopefully into the $1000 or $10,000 arena.
No matter how you measure it, may our faith always be growing.
God,
Thank you for your perfect will and plans for our lives. Thank you for planting faith in our hearts and helping it grow. Please continue to strengthen our faith so we can remain faithful in both the small and the big things. Increase the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, so we can live out and reflect your love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Root us deeply in love, so we can truly understand how wide, long, high, and deep the love of Christ is. Help us to know this love, to live it out daily, and to share it with others—a love that surpasses all understanding—so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. We pray this in Jesus’s name, AMEN.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV)
Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look on us, we pray,
for we are all your people. (Isaiah 64:9 NIV)