Luke 18.42 comments your faith has healed you. God begins His teaching in this section by telling us to pray with perseverance.

When Jesus makes His comment it is to a man who persevered in crying out to Him despite rebuke and demands to stop, in the end, His perseverance was rewarded. What’s interesting is that God said it was the man’s faith that healed him. Jesus did not say it was his persevering prayer or the power of God but faith that caused his healing.

The man cried out to Jesus because he believed, he had faith, that Jesus could heal him. The blind man continued to shout out Jesus’ name despite the crowd, who had no such faith, berating him for his shouting and crying out because he was adamant in his desire for healing.

This faith, demonstrated by prayer and perseverance, is the kind God desires from His people. Certainly Jesus could have ignored the man’s pleas. His faith in Jesus would not have been rewarded had God decided to ignore him.

God responds to the needs of His people when those needs are earnestly and passionately expressed. Most of us have little faith. We are far to tentative in crying out to God for help.

We fear He doesn’t care or wont respond but its because we have no faith in His love for us or His desire to care for us. Repeatedly God tried to teach us that He loves us when He lived among us as Jesus. Jesus healed everyone who came to Him in faith. Jesus even healed and fed some who followed Him regardless of their faith.

God wants us to believe fervently, passionately and continually in His love for us and willingness to display His goodness toward us. Faith is that diligent and passionate approaching of God as Father in prayer  to help us in our time of need.

Our children teach us this same lesson every time they come to us passionately with one of their needs. God reminds us that unless we come to Him as little children we cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.