Stepping out in faith

January 2, 2025

FAITH HAS NO limits. It’s not like height, where you reach your optimum and then just hang out for the rest of your life. It’s more like muscles, which grow as we flex them. In his second letter to the believers in Thessalonica, the apostle Paul commends them because “your faith is growing abundantly” (1:3).

If you’re looking to grow your faith in 2025, be encouraged that you only need—as Jesus told the first disciples—a mustard seed’s measure to start. But as you offer it to God, you might consider the example of Harry Colcord.

Back in the late 1800s, French tightrope walker Charles Blondin attracted huge crowds for his daring traverses of Niagara Falls. Big crowds hooted and hollered when he crossed, on occasion stopping to cook and eat an omelet on a table balanced on the rope.

When he asked onlookers if they believed he could carry someone across on his back, they all agreed and cheered. But when he asked for a volunteer? Silence. There’s a difference between belief (intellectual assent to a proposition) and faith (stepping out confidently).

The one person who took up Blondin’s invitation was Colcord, who was also his road manager. His actions offer three foundations for exercising our faith muscles:

He looked back. “Blind faith” might better be called stupidity. Colcord knew quite well of Blondin’s capabilities. His volunteering wasn’t based on wishful thinking but on solid history. In the same way, as we remember what God has done—reminding ourselves and each other as we gather as the church—our confidence that He can do even more than He already has grows stronger.

He lined up. Colcord stepped forward to do something seemingly crazy. And God often asks us to move as an expression of our faith. We see that in how many of those Jesus healed He called to some form of action. Be open to Him asking you to do something seemingly unusual, or even irrational.

When Jesus returns to Bethany after his friend Lazarus’s death, He tells the mourners to roll the stone away from the tomb. Martha demurs, saying because her brother had been dead four days, there will be an odor. Here we have someone who loves Jesus, a disciple, not wanting to do what He says because she is scared it might cause a stink, an offense—what will people think? But when they remove the stone, there is no stink; there is resurrection.

He let go. Blondin’s instructions were clear: “When you get on my back, become a dead weight. If we wobble, don’t you try to correct things. I am the center of gravity.” In other words, Colcord had to die to self. Moving out in faith often means surrender, letting go of control and trusting God to make any adjustments that are needed.

Looking back on his many years of ministry, the respected writer and teacher and counselor Paul David Tripp observed in a recent book, “I am embarrassed to admit that much of what I thought was faith in Jesus Christ was actually self-reliance.”

Tripp is not alone. Let’s follow Colcord’s example in the coming year and see what God will do. If all you have is a mustard seed of faith, God says, “That’s all I need!”