Luke 7- Faith and Questions

Let’s revisit our friend John the Baptist. If you’ll remember, John was prophesied about in scripture as being a messenger who would prepare the way for Jesus. John had radically set himself apart from the way the rest of the world was living, and was baptizing people and telling them that true repentance would cause them to change their lives. John had been following God and had done some wonderful things.

In Luke 7, we see that John heard about the miraculous things Jesus had been doing and he sent two of his disciples to Jesus, asking him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” In other words, “Hey, are you the guy that God has been leading me to prepare the way for? ‘Cause it sounds like you could be, but I want to be sure.”

I find two things really interesting about this.

First, when I read this I realized something I had never thought about before. John had been baptizing people and preparing the way for someone greater—without even knowing who, exactly, that person would be. It turned out to be his own cousin, but that’s beside the point. This left me thinking, how often do we step out in faith and do what God is calling us to do, even when we can’t see the bigger picture or know what the end results will be? I, for one, am the type of person who wants to know exactly how things are going to turn out and then I carefully plan before I jump. But sometimes (most of the time?) following God means you just have to let that go and jump in faith, being sure of only one thing—that he is leading you where he wants you to go and that he knows what the plan is.

The other thing I find interesting is Jesus’ response. Notice that he didn’t respond with something like, “Dude, I thought John was supposed to have all this faith and that he was committed to doing what God told him to do. How could he possibly not know that I’m the one who was to come? Maybe his faith isn’t that strong after all. What a disappointment he’s turned out to be.” No, Jesus praised John as a great prophet. I believe God knows that even when we have faith and are following him, we will not always understand and that we’ll have questions—and he’s okay with that. I don’t think it offends or angers him when we have questions about what his plan is; I think he is more concerned with whether or not we are following him even with our questions.

My desire is that I will be faithful enough to follow God even when I can’t see the bigger picture and even when I have questions about his plan. That can be scary sometimes.