I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 17-18

Perhaps Luke just wrote it this way to move from one thing to another, but this passage reads as if the disciples asked Jesus about how to increase their faith in response to His teaching about forgiveness.  So, that makes me think we need to realize just how hard obeying Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness is.  The disciples heard what He had to say and their first thought was, “How can I get enough faith to do that?”  If someone wrongs us repeatedly and asks for forgiveness each time, we are to grant that forgiveness each time, even if they do so seven times in one day.  Let’s be clear that Jesus was not saying that we only have to forgive people seven times in one day.  He was saying that if people wrong us and ask our forgiveness, we should give it to them, no matter how often they have wronged us.

Now, let’s look at what Jesus says about how we increase our faith.  Initially, I was going to start here, but then I realized what I wrote in the previous paragraph and I thought that was important to write about as well.  The first thing Jesus says in response to the question about how to increase our faith is that it doesn’t take much faith to accomplish miraculous things.  As to the answer to the question, it is both easier than we might think and immensely harder than we would like.  If you want to increase your faith, and you should desire to increase your faith, you need to do that which you know is God’s will with no expectation of thanks or reward.  The more we serve God, the more we will see His power, and thus the more we will have faith in what He can do.  We do not grow our faith by serving God in the hopes of reward.  We grow our faith by recognizing that serving God is our duty and then doing so.  Our reward for serving God will be more opportunities to serve Him.