²⁷ After Jesus left the girl’s home, two blind men followed along behind him, shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on us!”

²⁸ They went right into the house where he was staying, and Jesus asked them, “Do you believe I can make you see?”

“Yes, Lord,” they told him, “we do.”

²⁹ Then he touched their eyes and said, “Because of your faith, it will happen.” ³⁰ Then their eyes were opened, and they could see! Jesus sternly warned them, “Don’t tell anyone about this.” ³¹ But instead, they went out and spread his fame all over the region.

Matthew 9:27-31

Dear God, I normally read the story of Jairus’s daughter out of Mark 5 and not Matthew 9. Mark kind of skips over this story of the two blind men after Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead, but Matthew gives it to us. So this is part of a string of pretty incredible healings. In Matthew 9, he healed a paralyzed man, the woman who was “bleeding,” Jairus’s daughter, these two blind men, and then after this he casts out a demon. Yes, the fame of Jesus was growing a lot.

Here’s the part that always hard for me: “Do you believe?” Do I believe? I have so much love for you and yet so little faith. If I had more faith, well, I don’t know what my life would be like or how it would change me. Would I be more focused on intercessory prayer if I had more faith? I kind of believe in amazing healings–I’ve seen them–but if I really believed, would I pray that much more? My prayers tend to be more about changing my heart and the hearts of others than they are about praying over physical maladies. I even pray more for provision for needs than I pray for healings.

I have a friend who I talk to every Friday morning, and this morning we were talking about health insurance, healthcare, and faith in healing. He doesn’t have health insurance and is of the mind that if sickness comes then sickness comes. That’s a little too fringe for me. But I get it. I think it’s also easy to say about yourself, but when it comes to your wife or children, is that really the level of faith I’m prepared to live at? Luke was a doctor (although I have no idea what made someone a doctor as opposed to anyone else 2,000 years ago). How did he feel about it? I do know in the story of the woman bleeding, he took a more sympathetic tone towards doctors of the time.

Father, the only thing I really know to pray in this moment is for you to increase my faith, but I am terrified at the thought of what kind of trial would come my way that would grow my faith. But I will pray this. Give me whatever you need me to have so that I will continue to grow into the man you want me to be. Be glorified. Be worshipped. Be loved. Help me to be your ambassador in every situation I find myself in today. Help me to decrease so that you might increase in my life.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen