Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Do I Have Enough Faith? with Ben Carruthers
Ever wondered how much faith is enough? Join us as we unravel this profound question with Ben Carruthers, the insightful director of student and family ministry. Through personal anecdotes and biblical insights from Matthew 17, Ben tackles the misconception that the quantity of faith determines its power. Learn why the true strength of faith lies in its object rather than its measure. Ben's stories, including humorous personal experiences and touching narratives from his congregation, offer a refreshing and liberating perspective on finding peace and purpose in your faith journey.
Prepare for an emotional and thought-provoking exploration as we delve into the resilience of faith in the face of adversity. Ben shares a heart-wrenching story about a family's enduring faith after the tragic loss of their daughter. This poignant account serves as a powerful testament to where faith should be placed, rather than how much of it we possess. By the end of the episode, you'll be encouraged to reflect on your own life's mountains and consider whether you're focusing on the right aspects of faith. Tune in to this episode for a deeply moving and enlightening discussion that promises to reshape your understanding of faith and belief.
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Yeah, easy transition from that into this. So well, good morning. My name is Ben Carruthers, I'm the director of student and family ministry here and I'm excited to be with you this morning as we dive into the sermon series called you Pick, which is the sermon series best known for you guys send us questions and Sonia and I dig through and find the easy ones and send them off to Ryan. Just kidding, we take the easy ones. However, I will tell you we've done this three years, four years I mean as long as I can remember and the questions aren't getting easier. The questions are getting harder, which I think is incredibly amazing, because I say it all the time to people here and people outside this place that God is at work here in this body of Central, and these questions are proof of that, that we are on this journey together, diving deeper into this thing called faith and diving deeper into what it means to have a relationship with God.
Speaker 1:And this question today really stuck out to me. It comes from Anonymous. We'll leave it at Anonymous, but the question is how do I know if I have enough faith? How do I know if I have enough faith? And when I picked this question, I'm like that's a really good one. I like that one a lot, and the more and more I dug into it, the more I thought this is an incredibly important question. It's a question that can rip apart our faith. It's a question that brings serious guilt and shame and doubt. So then I thought I should not answer this question because this is way too heavy. But then I'm like no, we got to tackle this and this passage that we talked about, I think is really key and we'll talk about that in a second. But this question, I think, really is the question that's before the other question Do I have enough faith?
Speaker 1:I think the question behind the question is do you have enough faith in what, or to do what? My kids I have four kids they're my two oldest, isaiah and Maya lately, over the past few months, have come up with this way of asking me questions and they'll come to me and they'll say hey, what are we doing Monday, september 1st of 2025? I'm like what are you talking about? Well, what are we doing? What do we got going on? What do we got going on next Sunday? What do we got going on next Saturday? And I get so annoyed by this question Because what they're really asking is I want to do something this Sunday, but they want to see if it's all clear first, because then I don't have a reason why to say no, literally no. I always can say no, I don't need a reason. I'm dad, that's part of the deal. But they ask me this all the time.
Speaker 1:It's the question behind the question, it's the real meaning. And with this question, do I have enough faith? I think the real question we ask ourselves is do I have enough faith for what? And this is why it's so important Do we have enough faith for what?
Speaker 1:And we use this passage a lot when we talk about it, we talk about the size of a mustard seed just a little bit of faith. But I think there's something more going on in this passage, more in the context of this passage that I think brings us a little peace when it comes to this question of how much faith is enough. And so that's our goal this morning, that's our prayer this morning that maybe we find some peace and maybe a different way to look at this question. So will you pray with me before we dive into it? Heavenly Father, lord, we give you thanks and praise for this morning, an opportunity to dive into a passage that many of us are familiar with. Who have heard the legend of the mustard seed? And we've heard that it just takes a little bit of faith. But, lord, we ask the question this morning is faith enough, or faith in what, or how much faith do I need for certain things? And so, as we dive through these really hard, important questions, I pray that this passage guides us to the truth. I pray that this passage brings us a sense of peace of what our faith looks like. It's in your name. We pray Amen. So faith is strong enough for what? Do I have enough faith for what? Do I have enough faith for prosperity? Do I have enough faith that good things will happen to me? Do I have enough faith for health, for good health in my life and for other people in my life? Do I have enough faith to be saved? These are questions that we ask and they can cause us worry and guilt. And this passage Jesus kind of answers it, but in a different way.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to this passage of Matthew, chapter 17, and let me paint a picture of kind of what's going on here. So Jesus with three of his disciples are not with the disciples at this moment. They're up on the mountain for the transfiguration, so it's the rest of the disciples at the base of the mountain. And this man brings his son. Now different translations will say different, say possessed by a demon or dealing with seizures, whatever it may be, but this boy is ill. And the father brings his son to the disciples and say Please heal my boy Right. Please heal my boy. He's dealing with this. We've tried everything, nothing's working. Please heal. So the disciples gather around this boy and they're about to perform. Perform this amazing miracle heal this boy from this demon possession or this illness, whatever he's dealing with, and nothing happens. Nothing happens. Imagine being the disciples in this moment. Imagine standing there with this father so hopeful that his young boy will be cured, and the disciples standing around and people have heard the miracles that have happened. Jesus and his disciples have done healings at this point. And here is this guy's moment to have his son healed. And he's got almost all the whole 12 there right, like almost the whole pack right. It's going to work, and nothing happens.
Speaker 1:Imagine being there when my wife and I's first house. It was in Coon Rapids and we lived there for a little bit and then we decided to rent it out and we got a call from the renters one night that the furnace wasn't working and it looks something like this kind of you know those creepy furnace, like hidden in a corner, no one wants to go there Spiderweb, cobwebs, all that kind of stuff. So they call me, me, who has no idea how a furnace works, let alone how to fix a furnace, but we're the renters, right. So I go over there and I'm looking at all the buttons and the hoses and the knobs and I realize this is a furnace. You don't want to mess around too much with it. Right, like it could blow up.
Speaker 1:I've seen things happen on movies like Die Hard, it happens, and so I'm tinkering around, but I am trying to figure out. Okay, what's this going on? What's going on? And I, you know we got, we got the technology in the palm of my hand, so I YouTube it. Right, something wrong with the furnace. It won't turn on. I'm down there for a few hours and I have no idea what the problem is None, and so I have to call in the expert. I have to call the expert, so he comes down, he looks at the furnace and in five seconds he walks over to it and turns it on. There was a switch, a light switch on the furnace, and the whole thing kicked right on and he said $500, please. Right, we look at the problem, we do everything we can and we can't figure it out. And the expert comes and fixes it.
Speaker 1:And this is what happens, right, the disciples are gathered around, they can't cure this boy, and Jesus comes down and they say we can't do it. And then he says something pretty harsh. Did you catch that in the reading? When I read that, I was like I'm not doing this. This is horrible. This is mean, jesus, I mean, come on, this is what he says in Matthew 17. He says this you faithless and corrupt people, how long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? How long must I be with you, man? That's brutal.
Speaker 1:Another, another the story's in multiple gospels and this really concerned me. Like man, he's coming really harsh on the disciples. This is in other gospels and you find out that there's a crowd of people, and part of that crowd is the Pharisees, the people who want to see Jesus fail, the people who want to see the disciples fail, people who are there? Probably mocking the disciples, see, you can't do this mocking their faith. And so Jesus turns to them and says how long must I be around you? And then he turns to the boy and, with a flip of the switch, the boy is healed. And then people go away and the disciples pull Jesus aside and this is really important, we're going to talk about this later.
Speaker 1:He pulls him aside and he says how come we couldn't heal the boy? And then he says this famous line because you had little faith. But then he says this and this is what made me ponder, this is what I didn't understand. He says if you had faith, the size of a mustard seed, the faith the size of a mustard seed. He says this to his disciples. He says this to the men who have left their jobs, left their family and shown amazing amounts of faith and belief in Jesus. And he turns to them and says if you have faith, the size of this. The mustard seed is so small that even Google can't find a clear image of it. That's how small it is.
Speaker 1:He says if your faith was this small, that didn't make sense to me. How is that possible? These disciples, who have left everything behind, who have done these amazing things with Jesus, how is it possible they don't even have that amount of faith? And that really depressed me, because, man, if the disciples can't have that, what's my shot?
Speaker 1:So maybe Jesus is saying something a little different here. Maybe he's not saying it's an amount of something. Maybe he's saying it's an amount of something, but rather where or whom you put your faith in. Maybe he's not saying it's about all the faith that you can collect and bring in by doing all of these things. You should have prayed more, you should have fasted more, you should have done more service, you should have read your Bible more. Then your faith would build and build and build, and then you'd have enough faith for this. I don't think that's what he's saying and that's why he chose a mustard seed, the smallest seed that grows into an amazing large tree. I think he chose this image on purpose to tell us listen, it's not about the amount of faith that you have, but it's about where you place this tiny seed In. What and whom do you place it in? Because the interesting part is, if you go back a few chapters in the book of Matthew Matthew chapter 10, that is where Jesus sends out his disciples and in there verses 1 and 2, he says you are my disciples and guess what you're going to be able to do? You're going to be able to heal the sick and cast out demons. And that was verses before. So the disciples have probably been doing this already.
Speaker 1:Imagine that being a disciple and being with God and seeing it and doing it, and sometimes our human nature can take over. Think about your own faith journey your own faith walk. When things are really good and things are humming, sometimes we forget about our faith. Sometimes we start putting our trust maybe more in who we are because life is humming, but then something comes along and just shreds our life apart. And where do we go as people of faith? We go back to this source and man praise God that God is good and allows this and loves us for doing this. This is incredible, but sometimes we get relying on our own strength. I think this is what's happening here, that is it possible that the disciples are there, jesus is gone. They've done this before, maybe just another day in the office, and they're putting their faith more in their own strength and their own abilities instead in the power that lies within them because of Jesus. See, it's not about how much faith we have, but where we place our faith. Now, this might seem funny, but the amount of faith versus where we place our faith, it's a real deal. Right, it's a real deal.
Speaker 1:Anyone love donuts? Thank you for being honest, pryor. Thank you for being honest. Thank you, I love donuts and I have a deep faith and a deep belief that if I ate this for every single meal of my life, that I could look like this, that I could look like this. There it is. The first picture was more accurate, right. I believe it with all my heart. I have a huge amount of faith that, yes, if I eat this donut for every meal, for every day of my life, I too can look like Thor. It doesn't make it happen, but we do it. We put our faith and belief in things like that.
Speaker 1:When I was in high school, my ninth grade year, I took French for five years and I can't speak it, so that was good. Seminary is going much better than ninth grade French. I took French my ninth grade year and we came to our first exam and I didn't study. I didn't do anything and I was super freaking out because I usually got good grades, but I knew I was going to bomb this thing. And I heard about this thing called osmosis. Anyone heard of osmosis before? Yeah, I heard about this thing where if you put your books open on your pillow at night and sleep on your books, the knowledge will magically come into your brain and you'll be successful. I did it that night and I'm proud to say I failed ninth grade French right. It doesn't work, but the belief in something was so strong that I did it, that I did it.
Speaker 1:You see, this is why it's really important, because what you put your faith in dictates how you live your life. What you put your faith in will dictate how you live your life. So what are you putting your faith in? Or are you too concerned and worried about the amount of faith that you have that Jesus is looking at your life with a checklist and saying, well, you didn't pray enough, you didn't read your Bible enough. If you did only these things, your faith would grow and be strong, and then you could do these things. You see that word Then you could do these things.
Speaker 1:That's where we get it wrong. He knows it. That's where we get it wrong. He knows it. That's where we miss the boat, because it's not about the amount of faith that we have, but where we place our faith, and we do this more than we think. Think about our lives, think about the things in your life where you're like I can do this on my own, I don't need help, I got this, I'm strong enough, I've lived long enough, I understand this. We see this all the time with addiction. Man, people don't need help and they finally come to a spot where they realize that they can't do it on their own, on their own strength, and they put their faith in something else. We see this all the time in our lives, and not only does it dictate how we live, but there's another danger here, and the disciples play this out in the verse In Matthew 17, 19,.
Speaker 1:It says this then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said why could we not cast it out? Something really interesting is happening here, right, what do they do? They pull Jesus aside, away from the crowd. They pull him where no one is around and they say why couldn't we do it? Why did they do that? See, because I think they're feeling some guilt and some shame. Feeling some guilt and some shame, why couldn't we? Is our faith truly not strong enough? Have we not done enough in our lives to show Jesus that we can do this? What more do we need to do? Everyone watched us fail. What went wrong?
Speaker 1:I think there are people in this room and in this congregation, in this community, that deal with this, that don't understand that they do all the right things, they read all the right books, they come to church every Sunday, they tithe, they have communion, they do everything they're supposed to do and yet their life is still in shambles. And they deal with this guilt and shame because they feel like they're not doing enough of the right things, that they're not reaching that bar that God has set for them, because their faith is so small or not even there what else can I do? And it fills them with guilt and shame and drives them further and further into the darkness. This is a real danger when we start asking the level of your faith as opposed to what you put your faith in, and when you put your faith in God, it's this level of trust, it's this level of saying listen, life is not gonna be easy, life is going to be hard.
Speaker 1:I remember when I have a spiritual director his name was Steve, and we would go through the Bible and read the books of the Bible together. And whenever we came to healings, whenever we came to the disciples just going up to people and healing them, we'd always stop and pause and be like am I supposed to be doing that Right? Am I supposed to, like when I see someone who's sick, should I, with confidence, knowing that this is how God works, sometimes go up to them and pray that they are healed? We struggled with that, right, because, man, what if it doesn't work? What does that say about us? What does it say about my level of faith? But when you put your trust and faith in God, it's saying, man, god's plans are bigger than whatever I can do. But I'm here to pray for you, I'm here to love on you and I'm here to say that God loves you and if God heals you, praise God. And if he doesn't, praise God, because it's not about the level of faith that I have, it's not about the level of faith that you have, it's about the fact that we put our faith in God and God is good. There's a big danger with this question.
Speaker 1:And then this verse wraps up with this pretty powerful moment, right. He says faith, like a mustard seed, can do what it can move mountains. And where are they? Right at this moment? At the base of the mountain. And so Jesus tells the disciples man, faith, as tiny as that mustard seed, can move what you see behind you, can move what you see behind you. Now, what are the mountains in our life? Right? What are the mountains the real life mountains, that feel that they cannot be moved? What are the things in your life that are blocking and struggling you with your faith in God and putting your whole trust and faith in God? What are those things that are getting in the way of those mountains? Those real mountains look like this like offering forgiveness to someone who has hurt you that's what a real life mountain looks like. Or showing love to someone who you think is unlovable that's what moving a mountain looks like. Or putting your faith and trust in God and not in yourself that is what a real mountain looks like. This is what he's saying. Those are the mountains that we can move when we put our faith and hope and life in the hands of Christ. This is really easy to say, incredibly hard to do.
Speaker 1:I shared last time I was up here that my son Arlo had surgery to remove his tonsils. I shared last time I was up here that my son Arlo had surgery to remove his tonsils. Story behind that I'll tell you later. I removed his tonsils and I got to go back with him. So they put him under for that and so I'm prepping in the room with him and they give me this white suit that was obviously made at Baby Gap because I put it on, I was like I'm going to need a little larger size folks. So they came in with this giant white trash bag that made me feel real good. So I put it on and my son makes fun of me calls me giant marshmallow pretty accurate. And I get to go back with him and I had never done this before and I was not prepared.
Speaker 1:And so we're wheeling Arlo back and Arlo's seven years old and he's a champ man. He's okay, he's not too nervous or scared, dad's freaking out, but he's doing good. And we're going through these doors for surgery and it's like the doors in ER man, like there's just massive doors and we get into this operating room and it's huge and all of these lights. And they warned him. He said and they allow me to stand there and hold his hand and then they give him the gas to put him to sleep and no one warned me at all what was going to happen.
Speaker 1:And all of a sudden he starts fidgeting and moving around and the doctor's like this is normal. I said I don't think so. I'm not a doctor, but this is not normal. He's like nope, he doesn't really know what's going on, his mind doesn't really understand what's happening. And it only lasted about 30 seconds. And then he's looking at me in the eyes and I see his eyes roll back and he closes his eyes and the doctor says you can give him a kiss and tell him you love him. Then you got to get out of here. I was like bedside manner, come on, man. And I do that. I bend down, I give him a kiss.
Speaker 1:I said oh, you know, I'm right in the operating room, I'm right out there. He doesn't know and I lose it. I absolutely lose it. The nurse is like follow me. And I'm like okay, and I'm like I got to hold it together.
Speaker 1:My wife's in the, you know, in the waiting room. I don't want to come out there. A mess. And you know I don't like to cry in front of her and you can psychoanalyze that later, but I just don't like to cry. And so the lady and I'm just I can't pull it together. What I've seen in my son I know he's going to be okay, I know this is a very common procedure, but what I just saw was the most horrifying thing in my life. So she walks me out into the waiting room.
Speaker 1:I see my wife and I immediately turn like this and I'm staring at a wall. There's nothing there. And she's like what's going on? I'm like nothing. She's like look at me. No, so I'm probably freaking her out right. I'm like no, hold it together, come on, pull it together. And then I turn around and I see her and I'm like back to the wall. I couldn't hold it together.
Speaker 1:I knew he was safe and I sat down next to my wife and in a moment of complete honesty I said I don't think my faith could take it. I don't think my faith could take it if I lost a kid. And in that moment I was reminded of a family here A few years ago. A family lost their daughter. I called them this week to ask if it would be okay to share this. They said yes, and I know this family well, not because I've spoken to them a lot, not because I've taken out to coffee or talk even about them losing their child, but I know them a lot because I notice them immediately when they walk through those doors, because I think to myself how can you be here? I don't get it. And they're here a lot. They have every reason not to walk through those doors and they do.
Speaker 1:And on the phone I told them. I said this is what I'm talking about this Sunday and your story is inspirational for me. And they're like well, it's hard, it's incredibly hard. It's not easy to walk through those hard. It's not easy to walk through those doors, it's not easy to deal with these questions. And they talked about that with me. I'm like I have no doubt, but this is what it means, where it's not about the amount of faith that you have. Their life is what it means to put your faith in God. That's what a life looks like, because they struggle.
Speaker 1:When we even talked, I'm like I don't know how much faith I have. I said it doesn't matter, you got it in the right place. And it's inspirational for me Because that's the kind of faith that I want to have, faith that a storm that big can come and rock your world, change your life forever, and you can be hurt and you can be angry and you can be confused, but you can still walk through those doors and still put your faith and hope in Christ. So, central Lutheran Church. Two thoughts before we end is the first is where are those mountains in your life? Where are the mountains in your life that you want moved and that you've been worried about the amount of faith that you have instead of where you put your faith? And the second is this If you're here this morning asking this question, do I have enough faith? If you're asking the question, you're in a good spot.
