The Time is Nigh to Focus Our Faith

Because Christ is the Truth, He is the key to building and fortifying our faith

By Khen Lim



Image Source: theatlantic.com

By the time he was in his late teens, Toshio Tokunaga was watching with dread as his country began equipping for war. This was 1937. By then the Second Sino-Japanese War had already begun and China was reeling from the effects.

Little did he realise at that time that his country would go on to commit some of the worst atrocities in humankind until 1948 when upon Japan’s unconditional surrender, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East handed down death sentences for seven war criminals and imprisonment for eighteen others. Those executed included the hideous Hideki Tojo, Iwane Matsui and Akira Muto.

In the time prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, Tokunaga came across a book at a bookstore that offered him a glimpse of some ‘unusual’ writings. In it, he discovered that someone had come to offer mankind an answer to our problem of sinfulness; it seemed that someone had now opened a way for us to find a real purpose and worthiness in our lives.

It was an odd discovery for the young boy but as he searched on, he finally came to the understanding that it was God he was reading about and that the Saviour mentioned in the book was none other than Jesus Christ. Tokunaga went on to survive the hardship and lived well into Japan’s recovery era where he lived a peaceful life, dying in September 2009 at the age of 86. He died a Christian and was buried in Chicago, Illinois.

The story of this young boy is new to me – I only learned it a few days ago – but it resonated a message that was important. This was an unusual message of Faith.

Just as the disciples had wrongly thought, it’s not about the size of your faith but rather the quality of it. Jesus says in Matthew 17:20, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” And to augment this truth, Tokunaga discovered that indeed, everything – and anything – is possible for God and for those who believe (Mark 9:23, 10:27) and that included moving mountains; all it took was faith the size of a mustard seed. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Jesus speaks of quality and not quantity and so when the disciples asked Him to increase their faith, He says they need not a large amount but only a mustard seed size would suffice. If you haven’t seen what a mustard seed looks like or how tiny it is, imagine the very tip of a lead pencil. If you reduce that to a single point at its tip, the mustard seed is actually even smaller than that.

Tokunaga understood the self-willingness to be disciplined in faith. A decision had to be made to build on this faith that is God’s gift to us (Ephesians 2:8) and to begin with, we are to wean our minds off ourselves. In other words we must reduce our sense of self-importance and to take on the interest in worshipping, praising and glorifying the Lord. We are to divorce ourselves from the secular passions that grip our lives and take us away from God. These are the distractions that fill the needless noises of our world and that threaten to distance us from Him.

In having a mustard seed sized faith, we are to, in other words, FOCUS COMPLETELY on God. The focus is the quality and it is about tuning in to the very right frequency where the reception is clearest and sharpest, where there are no ambient noises to disturb us. It is by doing so then that we can look to fully rely on the power of the Holy Spirit.

A good example of this is Peter who took his eyes of Jesus as he walked on water. Matthew 14:28-33 exemplifies how reliant we are on Jesus and how crucial it is that we must focus on Him. As we get distracted or frightened, we lose our grip and our faith can suffer.

Jesus said often in the Gospels to trust in Him. His unmistakable words are found in abundance in the Bible; He says, “I tell you the truth,” which in some cases, a simple word like “verily” is equally as usable. When Jesus says, “I tell you the truth,” we are guaranteed of one thing – nowhere else is this truth found, nowhere will anyone else has this truth and nowhere is the truth truer than His. For it is said in John 14:6 that, only Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Light.

As we build on our own faith in Christ, we can slowly but surely dismantle the doubts and uncertainties that plague our daily walk. We no longer have to be afraid of God’s promises as to whether or not He will deliver. Romans 10:17 tells us that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ.” And because Christ is the Truth, He is the key to building and fortifying our faith.

Lastly understand that we can never build our faith by concentrating on evil. Every day we hear nothing but threats of persecution and death from our enemies. If it isn’t about ISIS gloating about how they will conquer us soon, it can also be about taking away our Christian rights one bit at a time. While we certainly have enough reasons to hate all of these, we are to exclusively channel our spiritual emotions on to our powerful God. We are not to be concerned about how the world may be destroying itself. All we need is FOCUS UNERRINGLY.