Faith in Jesus is never doubting but hoping against hope
Today we embrace having faith in Jesus. If you are new to mental prayer, we invite you to visit our page on the ways of mental prayer, Don’t know how to pray to God, to learn more.
We begin Day 29 of our Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
Trust And Believe
Do you have an impossible situation that needs prayer? Faith is never doubting but but hoping against hope. This is a kind of hope that perseveres in belief even when it seems that what you are praying for is very unlikely. God does answer the prayers of the righteous and he is faithful in his promises. Let us meditate and pray about faith in Jesus and hoping against hope for an answer to our prayers. God, please come to our aid and give us the gift of hope as we pray.
Faith in Jesus, Never Doubting, Hoping against Hope
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful reflection and meditation for your Lenten journey with Christ to Jerusalem.
Opening Prayer
Jesus,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you. Send me your Spirit. I desire to have faith in Jesus’ promises and be able to hope against all hope when I pray. Give me strong faith so that I am never doubting your love for me or your presence in my life, even in what seems like an impossible situation. Take away all doubt in your faithfulness and replace it with the virtue of hoping against hope that anything is possible according to your will.
I am here, Lord, because I lack adequate faith. I know that you are kind and generous. I believe if I ask you for the gift of hope you will not only give me a reason to hope but show me that hoping against hope is possible.
Please send me your Spirit so that I can worship you with a pure heart and without distraction. Help me to separate myself from all worldly attachments and spend these 15 minutes praying for the ability to hope beyond all hope, with my heart and mind completely fixated on you. Jesus, look at me with the eyes of a faithful Father and have pity on me for my lack of faith and hope. You know all my weaknesses and that I can’t elevate my heart or my mind without your help.
Please give me the grace right now to pray my mental prayer well and to love you in a way that is pleasing to you. I want to grow to love you more perfectly. Thank you, Lord, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that everything that happens in my life is by your holy will, whether it be your divine providence or your permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with you toward Jerusalem. Help me carry my cross well and do so with great love in my heart for you.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at the Lord with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Make a Movie in Your Mind
You are entering into the crowded Temple area—it is the festival of booths—and you see Jesus from a distance. There is a crowd gathered around him and he is speaking, so you hurry over. As you get closer you see the angry looks of the Pharisees and scribes who are arguing with what he is saying….
Unless You Believe that I Am
John 8:21-30
He said to them again, “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.”
So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?”
He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.”
So they said to him, “Who are you?”
Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.”
They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said (to them), “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.”
Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.
Be Completely Real
Just as the bronze serpent was lifted up so the people could look and live, Jesus tells us plainly that He too will be lifted up —on the Cross— so that all who look to Him in faith may live. This is what it means to hope against hope: to trust in what you cannot fully see or explain, simply because He has promised it.
Ask yourself…
Do I really have faith in Jesus in my own life, in the trials and anxieties I currently face?
Try to envision yourself in the scene John. Imagine being a first century Jew, knowing the story of the bronze serpent, and how unlikely and irrational it sounded to simply look upon an image of a snake afixed to a staff to be healed. It took great faith to believe and be healed during the time of Moses. On it’s face this seems a very irrational thing to do in order to be restored.
Here in John Jesus tells them that He is the one who is the physician who has come to heal His people once and for all. He is going to be lifted up and He is the great I Am.
In what way does this proclamation tug at your heart? Contemplate your sinful nature, the many ways you have sinned in your thoughts and words, in what you have done, and in what you have failed to do. Contemplate your need to look at Jesus on the Cross to be healed.
Jesus was incarnate so that he could ransom you. He came to rescue you. He came to give you an abundant life in the Spirit through the Sacraments so that you could be freed from sin and death. He mounted the Cross so that you could be healed.
This was all done for you.
Take a moment to contemplate the love of Jesus and how he chose the lowest form of self-abasement by freely choosing death on a Cross. To have faith in Jesus is to believe in what we cannot see, hoping against hope in his mercy and love. We have to believe that because he desired to live among us in such humility and was willing to suffer a violent death to save us, his love is greater than our sin; so we must confess our sins and let him wash us clean.
Visualize Christ
Contemplate Jesus right now coming to you and filling your soul with Love. Give the Holy Spirit time to respond. Praise the Lord when you feel his presence. What is the burden on your heart? Be honest with Jesus and tell him your sinful habits. Linger a moment and wait for his response. Has he shown you something? You may want to write it down.
Let us continue our mental prayer with a meditation from Saint Catherine of Siena on hoping against hope in the love of God and his desire to forgive us of sin and redeem us
On Pains of Sinners in the Hour of Death
St. Catherine of Siena (the Dialogue of St. Catherine)
[Jesus to St. Catherine of Siena in the Treatise of Prayer, Chapter 132]
One who despairs despises My mercy, making his sin to be greater than My mercy and goodness. If a man falls into this sin, he does not repent and does not truly grieve for his offense against me as he should; grieving for his own loss instead, but not for the offense done to Me. Therefore he receives eternal damnation.
Do you believe in the love and mercy of God? Are you able to receive the love or do you despair that your sins are greater than God’s mercy? Is your conscience convicting you of sin and telling you that you are unworthy of God’s grace because of things you have done? Have you confessed these sins?
Sometimes we remain proud and unwilling to reciprocate the Love God gives us. This is called presumption. Sometimes we are too ashamed and we remain in our sinful state because we believe the lie that God would never forgive us or reconcile us to himself. This is also a lie.
Spend a moment with the Lord. Offer your heart. Speak to him about your fears and doubts. Are you presumptuous? Are you ashamed? Be honest.
Next, let us meditate for a moment on Numbers 21:4-9. Listen to the words of the Lord to the prophet Moses. Reread this passage a second time, praying the words from your own heart.
An Exercise in Faith: The Bronze Serpent
Numbers 21:4-9
From Mount Hor they set out by way of the Red Sea, to bypass the land of Edom, but the people’s patience was worn out by the journey; so the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!”
So the LORD sent among the people seraph serpents, which bite the people so that many of the Israelites died.
Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you. Pray to the LORD to take the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses: Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and everyone who has been bitten will look at it and recover.
Accordingly Moses made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever the serpent bit someone, the person looked at the bronze serpent and recovered.
Focus on the words, “Pray to the LORD to take the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses: Make a seraph and mount it on a pole, and everyone who has been bitten will look at it and recover.”
Jesus became sin so that we can be healed from it and reconciled to the Father. Take a few moments to sit with the Lord and contemplate what he has done for you.
Faith in the Promises: Hoping Against Hope
Psalm 102: 16-23
The nations shall fear your name, LORD, all the kings of the earth, your glory, Once the LORD has rebuilt Zion and appeared in glory, Heeding the plea of the lowly, not scorning their prayer.
Let this be written for the next generation, for a people not yet born, that they may praise the LORD:
“The LORD looked down from the holy heights, viewed the earth from heaven, To attend to the groaning of the prisoners, to release those doomed to die.”
Then the LORD’s name will be declared on Zion, his praise in Jerusalem, When peoples and kingdoms gather to serve the LORD.
Are You Listening?
You are the people not yet born that Psalm 102 is referring to. What was promised in the Old Testament has been fulfilled by Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ has come down from heaven to release you from your prison and give you true spiritual healing. He does not scorn your prayer, so pray with faith, hoping against all hope, and praise His holy name.
You have a choice. Are you going to have faith in Jesus, never doubting his words?
Take 1-3 minutes to listen to the Lord for his response to your heartfelt prayer.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 30 Mental Prayer Meditation
I Will Remain in Your Word and Know the Truth
I will remain in your word, Lord. You promise that when I do this I will know the truth and it will set me free.