Two blind men have followed Jesus and called out after Him. When He went inside, they sought a private audience with Him. “He [Jesus] asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you”; and their sight was restored.”
Jesus responds to the blind men, because they have sought Him wholeheartedly and in faith. They have followed him along the road from Jarius’ house, they have seen Him as Son of David and grasp that He is well able to restore their sight. But after all that, they are still not healed. Not until they confess their belief. There is something about confession – about testifying of your faith – that changes one’s experience of Jesus!
Earlier, Jesus had told the woman on the way to Jarius’ house, “your faith has healed you.” Her faith in Jesus is what healed her. Yet her faith in Jesus did not heal her until she touched Him. Taking action because of faith that strengthens that faith! Even if that action is something as simple as confession. As Hannah Smith once wrote, “Confession, it seems to me, is one of God’s ways of strengthening us in our faith. In this, it is just like it is in justification: if we do not confess it, the sense of it becomes weakened in our own minds.”
How true! Without confession – without testimony – faith is weak. But with testimony and by taking the action of speech, faith is made strong. Confessing your faith in Jesus enables the power of the Holy Spirit to do a work in your life.
In their commentary, Lange, Far, Hurst and Riddle note that confession has power, “Because it: 1. makes inward faith irrevocable; 2. Breaks loose from unbelief; 3. Unites with believers, becomes flesh and blood, and, in a good sense, acquires worldly form, worldly power, and the power of manifestation; 4. Pledges itself to full consistency in word and deed, life and death.”
Confession of Christ is the testimony of the Spirit, and therein lies its power. The late Henry J. Foster noted, “Every great religious awakening affords many examples of the power of testimony, even when that testimony is nothing more than the story of the speaker’s conversion and his “present experience.It has often been from rude lips a mighty power with cultured people. The facts of the Gospel story, told with freshness and reality, and with the power of the Spirit of God, have, from Pentecost onwards, been very effective preaching,—the most effective. Christian speculation has its time, and place, and value. There is a philosophy of Christianity. But the working force, the real lever-power, of it lies in its “testimony.””
To that we can only say, “Amen!”
Trials and tribulations only come into your life to test you, so you could make some testimonies out of them
Edmond Mbiaka
APPLICATION: Intentionality
When did you last testify to God’s power working in your life? Let it be that we speak often of His work, so that we might see His work in the lives of those around us!