As most of you know, our family is walking through the valley of the shadow of death.  My brother in law Mike has continued to deteriorate in spite of fervent prayer, an amazing show of courage on his part, incredible tough faith from my sister in law Judi, and a loyal family around him.   Yes we do believe in faith healing and we do believe there are times to “call things that be not as though they were,” but so far the miracle has not come.

As I thought about our situation this morning, 1 Cor. 13:13 came to mind for some reason.  It says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”   I find it very interesting that love is exalted above faith. This doesn’t diminish the importance of believing, it’s just saying “love is God’s best gift to us.”   I think this is because people with only faith, walk away when miraculous deliverance doesn’t come, but people who have love stay to serve.

Listen, I don’t know why some people I pray for find healing and some people I pray for get worse and die.  If you claim to have great mountain moving faith, you might say, “the problem is, you don’t walk in faith.”   Sometimes, you’re right, about that.  I am human and sometimes my confidence in God falters.  But if you abandon people in their suffering then you have a worse flaw than small faith, you have small love.

Through my forty plus years of pastoral ministry I have sadly watched people who claimed superior faith walk away from people who didn’t  receive a miracle of deliverance.  When I was in my early 20’’s working at Evangel Temple in Tampa Florida, I decided to put together a visitation team, similar to the one we have at BCC.  I put a man on the team and sent him out to visit a lady who was chronically ill.  A couple of weeks after the visit, I asked him to visit her again.  He said, “Oh no, I won’t go back, I pray for a person once and if they don’t have the faith to get their healing, I don’t waste my time on them.”   He had determined this lady wasn’t worth his times unless she measured up to his level of faith.  I know of a church where the core people left because of several tragic situaions that happend in the pastors family.  They said they were afraid to stick around because bad things might start happening to them. The fact that I have watched this emotional and even physical abandonment of hurting people in the name of faith over the years makes me especially grateful for the amazing people at Bethany Community Church who don’t flinch and don’t move away when our prayers don’t get answered the way we hoped.

Now it’s true that Jesus was sometimes tough on his disciples for their lack of faith, but it’s also true that Jesus turned water into wine, walked on water, successfully cursed a fig tree, caused money to magically appear in the mouth of a fish and held crowds of ten and twenty thousand spell bound by his teaching.  If you watched me do those things and got terrified by a thunderstorm on the lake, in a boat, in which I was a passenger, I would be ticked at you too.

Now, if you are reading this and are thinking, “I could really teach this man a thing or two about faith.”   I say “good!”  Fewer funerals is something I am all about.  If I  am convinced  you have lasting love for me, I will listen.

P.S.   Ever think about that fact that faith and hope won’t be qualities that you will use in heaven.  Why would you need faith where everything will be accomplished?  Why would you need hope where all of your hopes will be fulfilled.  Love? Now that’s a different story.  You will give and receive pure love infinitely and eternally.   No wonder brother Paul said, “the greatest of these is LOVE!”