Doing Your Duty With A Little Faith

Doing Your Duty with a Little Faith

Luke 17: 5-10, 2 Timothy 1:3-12

The Apostles were with Jesus daily. They saw miracles that would make their hearts stand still and yet they wanted more faith. What more could Jesus possibly give them? The answer is, he doesn’t give them anything more. Notice how Jesus answers their request. He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.”

I believe he is saying to them and to us, “Your problem really isn’t a lack of faith. It doesn’t take much faith to do sensational things. What it takes is commitment. What it takes is determination, and persistence and a will to see it through to the end.”

Don Gullett was the greatest athlete eastern Kentucky has ever seen. He excelled in all sports. He was so good that he was recruited by the University of Kentucky in all three sports….Basketball, Football, and Baseball. In Basketball he averaged 20 points and 12 rebounds a game; I personally witnessed him pitch a Perfect Game striking out 20 of 21 men he faced in the District Final against Ashland at Central Park; and he set the State record for scoring in football…..he scored an amazing 72 points in one game (11 touchdowns and 6 Extra Points). That record still stands today.

Although he was recruited by many major universities, he decided to play baseball and quickly found himself pitching for the Cincinnati Reds at the age of 19. In the end, he became a Red’s Hall of fame Pitcher winning World Series games for both the Reds and the Yankees.

I remember when Catlettsburg Wildcats played his High School the Mckell Bulldogs, in football my sophomore year 1969. Don was a senior. We had already been beaten by Wurtland at home 28 to 7 and the following week, Don Gullett’s team beat Wurtland 72-0. That was the game that he set the state scoring record for a single game.

Now I don’t have to tell you, we were really worried. We had already been beaten by the team that he scored all those points against. And now it was our turn to face Don Gullet and the McKell Bulldogs.

I remember that in preparing us for the game, our Coach, Jerry Klaiber, held a team meeting in the school cafeteria. We watched film of the game where he scored all those points. One of our players got so enthusiastic after the Coach’s pep-talk that he jumped up and shouted, “Put Gillett in the Skillet” and that became our Battle Cry the rest of the week.

I know the coach must have been sweating bullets dreading what was sure to be a terrible, embarrassing lost. But he did his best and came up with a defense to stop Gullett. What was it?

He decided not to worry about the things that we were lacking, that we couldn’t control. Instead, he relied on the things we already had. He looked at our weak points and our positives and he came up with his game plan. What did he do? He took the fastest, strongest man on our team, Jack Kelly, and told him to tackle Gullett every play. He said, “Run past any others in the backfield even if they have the ball and tackle Gullett anyway. Guess what? It worked, every play, Gullett was looking for Kelly to hit him.

At half-time, he was minus yards rushing and we were leading 12- 0. You see, all it took was very little. To use what we already had. A little faith and silly slogan.

O, the rest of the story…..McKell kicked off to us to start the second half. Jack Kelly received the ball and ran it up the field. He was tackled and injured and removed from the rest of the game.. We ended up losing the game 27-12, but we considered that a victory having escaped the record books.

In much the same way in our lesson today, Jesus talks to his team, His disciples. They are asking for more faith, and he is telling them you don’t need a lot of faith to win. It only takes a little faith to do great things. He is saying to them the problem is not that you have too little faith. The problem is that you are not applying the faith you already have.

He tells them a strange little parable. We could say that this is one of His “Hard Sayings” He says, “Suppose one of you has a servant who’s been plowing or looking after sheep. When that servant comes in from work would you say to the servant, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Not likely. You would probably say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink.’ Then, after dinner would you thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?” Then Jesus adds these interesting words, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’