God does not play favorites. Every blessing in the universe can be ours. God’s blessings, miracles, and resources are available to anyone who want to take it. The blessing of the Lord is already there, it is up to us to take it.
Fr. Domingo Bongalos
Every human being has faith; we always believe in something, even outside of religion. Faith is believing that something is true and committing our lives to it. It’s just a question of where we will put our faith. For us Christians, we put our faith in God, the biblical faith. Hebrews 11:1 states that faith is being “sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.” Faith is visualizing the future in the present. In biblical faith, we believe in heaven even if we have not seen it yet because believing is seeing.
Pope Francis reminds us that if we believe that God is omnipresent and loving, then we must entrust ourselves, our loved ones, and even our future, to God. Abraham is our primary model on this kind of faith. He believed that God is trustworthy and he offered his own son, Isaac, to God. There will be many times when we do not understand the things happening, but we still give our lives to His hands.
Faith releases God’s power and it is the key to receiving God’s blessings. In the Gospels, there is a story of a woman who was suffering from hemorrhage for 12 years and who got healed after touching the cloak of Jesus (Mark 5:25). Most of the time, we are like that bleeding woman – suffering from our broken relationships, unfulfilled dreams, and financial burdens to the point that we also start bleeding spiritually. We sometimes ask, ‘is God punishing me?’ It is this point of desperation that we need to search for a higher purpose, to search for God.
God does not play favorites. Every blessing in the universe can be ours. God’s blessings, miracles, and resources are available to anyone who want to take it. The blessing of the Lord is already there, it is up to us to take it. Jesus did not even touch or knew the woman, yet she was healed. She was healed because of her faith. She took that blessing and it became hers. All the healing and blessings we need is potentially ours, we just have to ask it with both our hands and our faith. He has made every blessing in the universe potentially ours.
In Mark 11:22-24, we are given a model on how to develop this faith. First is identifying our mountains. What is the root cause of our problem? Second is identifying our authority over the mountain. Speak words of faith; it may not happen overnight but in reality, things are changing in our favor. Every word has power because our words are derived from the words of God. We have that power and it came from God, use it! Last is identifying where we want to put this mountain. Doubt sees an obstacle while faith sees the way. Doubt sees the darkest night but faith sees the day. Doubt dreads to take the first step; faith moves forward. Doubt questions who believe; faith answers I AM. Don’t dwell our thoughts on the problems but on the solutions. When we do not have any solutions, the remaining thing we have is our biblical faith. Faith is the key to God, use it.
St. Augustine said faith is to believe what you do not see. The reward of this faith is to see what you believe. What reward do you want to see? Start having faith and start seeing your rewards.
Faith: A Fascinating Journey, shared by Fr. Domingo Bongalos, is the first topic of the Faith and Gratitude module. Read the second topic, Be Comfortable Not Knowing, by clicking this link.
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