Faith: The Man Who Amazed Jesus!

By Roger Lippross

Lipprosses and Friends in Glendora Church – Roger far left, Anthea far right.

The doctors called Anthea the “miracle girl.” She had such a calm faith through all this but it was faith built on her spiritual works of the every day – faith as a way of life. Great teachers such as Dallas Willard in The Spirit of the Disciplines remind us that if you wait until something serious happens it may be a bit late.

As soon as Anthea was rushed to hospital I asked for prayers via e-mail. She needed surgery right away. Family and friends around the world were praying. The Minister’s Conference in Ontario down the road stopped to pray for her.

What was the Problem?

In some ways, the hardest thing in all this was the diagnosis – the doctors were stymied: What was the problem? Where was the blockage, the mass – was it around her heart or hidden behind it? She also had a collapsed heart valve which was replaced.

About 2 AM at the hospital I met a couple who were already in the elevator when doors opened for me on the bottom floor. I said, I am going be with my wife who is very ill, “Let’s pray,” the man said. He prayed as if he knew her. Where did they come from? were they angels?

Do we really believe that our prayers for others matter when they are sick?

God may be waiting to hear our prayers.

Before the very difficult operation, the surgeon, the top man in his field around here, said, “Do you mind if we pray?” before putting Anthea under the anesthetic. After the operation he said the mass was a huge blood clot lodged inside her heart. He could not understand how she was able to survive, he had never seen any thing like it in his 25 years as heart specialist. I knew how, but I was still amazed.

Anthea stayed completely calm and faith-filled through this ordeal.

Roman centurions knew and understood authority.

The Man Who Amazed Jesus

In the New Testament there is only one record of Jesus being amazed by someone’s faith. That was in Luke 7:1-10.

Faith is connected to the invisible world. It believes that God’s word is true, that he will do what he said he would do. Our faith is strengthened by studying God’s Word (Romans 10:17). There we are told to ask for faith (Luke 11:9). Jesus has all the faith we need. The faith that saves and heals isn’t our faith; it is the faith of our Lord inside us.

When we dig further into the Roman centurion’s story of healing through faith we find out that Dallas Willard was right – there’s always more going on in our lives than meets the eye. We can’t simply wait till the crisis is upon us. It’s too late to ask then, What Would Jesus Do? We have to be ready. There are three things to glean from the encounter between Jesus and the centurion.

First, the centurion loved his neighbor.

Here he was one of the crack troops in the occupying Roman army and the text says simply “a certain centurion's servant, who was dear to him, was sick and ready to die” (Luke 7:2).

The Romans and the Jews did not get along. They mostly hated each other, but in this case the Jews cared deeply for this centurion. So the lesson here is to be rising above all that daily hatred and tension. This applies to us, right? Do our neighbors have a good opinion of us? Or do we hide away? Keep to ourselves? That is spiritual isolation and it has nothing to do with brotherly love.

Humility versus Buddy-Buddy

The Roman officer was humble. “I am not worthy” he said. God did not heal Anthea because she “deserved” a miracle. No one can claim that. The Bible is emphatic – the power of healing and of eternal life comes through faith, “not of works lest any man should boast.”

Today there seems to be a great tendency to be “buddy buddy” with God and Jesus. It’s even said that people like Jesus but dislike the church. That’s so sad. Jesus is many things but he is definitely not someone we should become overly “familiar” with. Every time the disciples tried that it worked out poorly. Peter even tried to rebuke him, remember? (Luke 16:23)

The Roman officer was properly humble in the presence of the power of God at work in Jesus. He didn’t even show up himself to make the request. No big show. No chariot scattering dust everywhere and servants running before him. No, he sent elders of the Jews to make his petition because he felt he was crossing the line. So he humbly stayed back across that line. But he knew something else, as a military man he knew how God worked.

He understood being in authority and working under authority and he knew enough about Jesus to know he commanded the power of God.

We need faith to understand about authority and working under authority. People who think they can like Jesus and dismiss the church are deluding themselves. The church is only the called out ones who have already surrendered their wills to their Lord and Master. At least in the ideal. We see too much of the church’s flaws today and that can confuse us. But Jesus is not only the Compassionate One but our Lord. And his word heals. That is why the centurion was blessed.

Do we still believe that God has the right to tell us how to lead our lives? We are sheep and sheep make trouble for themselves – they get stuck in fences. They even fall on their backs and need to be up righted. Let’s remember the terms of our relations with God and maintain proper respect.

Faith and Action

And so Anthea’s healing was a great miracle and a wonderful blessing to her and I and my five children. Now let’s be honest: We cannot always understand why God heals in some cases and not in others. That is a mystery we will understand in the future – and we can have faith in that. The centurion’s servant was healed because of faith but poor Lazarus died waiting for Jesus to come and then raised without any faith at all – he was dead (John 11). Remember too how Jesus himself could not do any miracle in his home town because of familiarity and lack of faith – this also amazed him (Mark 6:1-6).

So we cannot twist God’s hand in dealing with an invisible God and we cannot always know why he works but there are enough examples for us to keep on believing and keep on praying. Thank you for your prayers of faith for Anthea as they played a big part in all this. Like the old saying, “In a storm pray but keep on rowing.” So the question for us is: Is Christ amazed by our faith?