Faith =Trust=Love=Healing
“Faith is often understood as accepting something you can’t understand. The Greek word for faith is pistis, meaning “trust.” Whenever Jesus says to those he has healed, “Your faith has saved you,” he means they have found new life by surrendering in complete trust to the love of God.”—Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved (Convergent Books, 2017).
Henri Nouwen speaks to us this morning about faith in God. He reminds us that we often see faith as believing or accepting something we cannot explain or understand.
Jesus, however, says faith is trust, trust in the unconditional love of God for us that never ends. Knowing this keeps us from looking for and demanding love from other people or from anything other than God. Addictions are love for something other than God. Family misunderstandings arise because, in essence, we do not feel loved or cared for by other family members.
We do not feel appreciated by other friends, despite all we have done for them. We have given our lives to our work, family, and church, and we perceive that they no longer appreciate us. We have offered conditional love. We have forgotten what unconditional love is like because we have stopped offering it or believing in it.
Whenever Jesus tells those he has healed, “Your faith has saved you,” he is saying that you have surrendered in complete trust to the love of God. That surrender, the trust in an unconditional love continually offered by our God, has healed our hearts and souls, even if physical healing never occurs.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com https://www.joannaseibert.com/