Moment to Moment

To complete what is lacking

…We pray very earnestly night and day to see you face to face and to complete what is lacking in your faith. (1 Thessalonians 3:10)

“To complete what is lacking in your faith.”

It seems Paul is talking here about how because he was forced to flee Thessalonica so suddenly (Acts 17:5-10), he wasn’t able to instruct the Thessalonians as throughly in the faith as he had wanted to.

And as I read that, I especially thought about my daughter and the other young people in my church. I want to help complete what is lacking in their faith, to fill in the gaps they still have as to what they believe and why.

But I also thought about myself. Because I see gaps in my own faith.

Not so much in knowing what I believe, but in living it out.

Too often, for example, I pray with little faith that anything will ever change, whether it’s for someone’s healing, or the salvation of someone I love, or the resolution of their seemingly neverending struggles.

I also struggle getting out of my comfort zones a lot. It’s easy for me to do things when I think things will go well. But to have the faith to step out into things I’m not so sure about, I still struggle with that.

And so I’m praying, “Father, please complete what is still lacking in my faith.”

I’d covet your earnest prayers for me on that too.