Question: Will God increase our faith if we ask Him to increase it? What does the parable of the master and the servant teach us regarding faith and duty?
Answer: Greetings in the most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ and Savior!
Parables are earthly stories of this world used by Jesus to reveal the heavenly realities and truth of the Kingdom of God that cannot be seen, but exist already to rule over this world. The Kingdom of God is recruiting new citizens of heaven from earth, and parables are the guidelines given by God to understand and get trained to have this attitude of heaven fixed in each of its citizen's heart to get trained for heavenly living through growing in the nature of God more and more to love it and live through it in the future for the Glory of God.
Faith and forgiveness always go together. One who forgives the most, needs the most amount of faith to let go of others debts, which he or she believes will be restored by God in His way as a double blessing in His time. And if repentance for sins happen in the heart of a brother who feels bad and convicted by the Holy Spirit for his or her actions, then forgiveness for the offence should be given back to the offender through faith. Thus, the prayer of faith will only operate in the atmosphere of the forgiveness that we practice by the grace of God (Jam 5:15-18).
When a person tries to sincerely walk in the nature of God by receiving it, and thus co-operating with God to let Him live out His life through them (Gal 2:20), then it will be easy for them to hear God and fulfill His command through which faith increases rapidly through their lives.
Here is the parable of the Master and the Servant:
""5 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” 6 So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7 And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? 8 But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. 10 So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”" (Luke 17:7-10).
Having the power of faith and the ability to increase in it to express the work of heavenly supernatural faith on our earthly surrounding, depends on how well we know that we are bound to God, and not he to us, because He is our creator and we are the clay (Rom 9:15, 20-24).
God is a debtor to no human, the Bible asks the question, " 34 “ For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has become His counselor?” 35 “Or who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to him?”" (Rom 11:34-35). Humans are creation, and God is the one and only Creator of all humankind and angels alike. So the righteous God as a owner of the whole Universe, doesn't need to pay any humans or angels alike. God is the owner and we are the servants of Him, who are all created for His Glory to be relished and revealed to all through us. God is the King of Kings and Lord and Lords, we are the citizens of His Kingdom. God is the Father of all spirit, we are His spiritual children. God is the potter and we are the clay vessels. God has every right to use the vessels as He likes, whether it is vessels of wrath or the vessels of mercy like us who are saved by faith through grace.
When Jesus insisted the apostles to believe and have faith for miracles to happen to them and through them, immediately they approached Jesus to help them increase in their faith. Immediately Jesus said to them, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you".
Mustard seed is the smallest seed that we use in our day to day cooking and other activities like it, but the mulberry tree roots grow very horizontal roots over a wide area where it stands and also goes deep enough to withstand any storm pull, therefore it is impossible to easily uproot as it grows to a great height of even 40 to more than 70 feet or even 80 feet. Jesus teaches us a very important lesson about faith, what is it? It is not the size of the faith but the quality of the faith that will always work to do impossible task to become easily possible.
In other words, our faith may seem to be like the size of a mustard seed, but if that faith comes in to us by hearing the true word of God from heaven, our words will carry the power of heaven to make impossible things to be made easily possible (Eccl 8:4). The incalculable power of God without fail gets unleashed in the lives of those with true faith (Rom 10:17).
So there was a "sound of (angelic) marching in the tops of the mulberry trees" that directed David the King of Israel to victory after victory against his enemies the Philistines (2 Sam 5:24-25). Every times the voice of God is heard rightly and understood and obeyed, each time the Lord Himself goes before you to make impossible things to become possible. When we are living in the center of the will of God for our lives by faith, we have been given so much rights as God's children, that God has taken upon himself to fulfill even every word of command we speak with the authority of God (Isa 45:11).
So what is so important than even increasing our faith is, to know whether the word we have heard already from God is a genuine one (2 Cor 13:5-6), or else it is never too late to hear from God and exercise the right spiritual authority on earth to fulfill the heavenly will of God through our powerful actions (Rom 10:17; Heb 11:6). Showing true faith within will always display powerful action of faith without, because God will be the one who fulfills our command of faith towards Him (Jam 2:18, 26). The grandest of our spiritual relationship with God always start to happen, when we the servant, serve God so obediently that He gets so pleased enough that he starts to serve us at the end of it all. Glory!
This is what Jesus explains in the following parable by saying, "7 And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? 8 But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. 10 So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”
Every true man of God or a woman of God understands the concept of their duties to fulfill and please God, before they see great, wondrous and supernatural things happen for them by God. At the end of such great blessings, they will remain humble enough to acknowledge that they did nothing great except be faithful in their duty to serve God, but God will always be magnified and glorified when they truthfully say that, 'God chose to bless them supernaturally with all the blessings of heaven which they do not least deserve.'
The master servant relationship with God is always there, even though there is a Father child relationship that exist already with Him. Understand the imperfect nature of all humans, who become his child. They still sin and are in training to avoid it more and more which separates them from God and His goodness. So the servant humility that is learned in humans, get their due respect and recognition from God when He begins to see a pleasing nature of His as a master get imbibed in them. Will as a master we will want the same or different for our servant? In other words, will we want a servant who robs to remain with us without any change, will we want a sexual pervert to remain as a servant forever with us, etc? No. We want the servant to be trained to become perfect more and more as they remain longer with us. That is the same God wants from us too! Hallelujah!
A true servant will do everything without any expectation as he or she will understand that it is their duty to serve their master. But when the master is a good master, the reward for serving will always outdo the work they have done to deserve it. So likewise, God being a good master whose very nature is to reward, will always outdo it to all His faithful servants to bless them and make them a great blessings to their locality and even to the whole world. Praise the Lord! No master will ever ask a servant to come and eat something, when he himself is hungry. Instead even when the servant has come from plowing field or tending sheep, he will say to the servant to serve him first with all the food that is available and cooked. But every servant even though hungry will serve him without any expectation and will look to the reward of his master which comes at last. We too as a good servant of God, should look to God's answer and reward at the end of serving him first through our lives without any expectation. Every powerful word spoken by us, will be answered by God when we have already lived a life pleasing to Him. That is what happened in the life of Jesus, who served his Father God for thirty years and then every word Jesus spoke God fulfilled it for the Glory of heaven for the rest of his life (Matt 3:17; John 11:41-42)! Amen.
The best way to live a balanced spiritual life is to serve God without any expectation as long as we live, and also say when great things happen for us, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do,’ knowing within us that it is not our work that has earned us our reward but rather the goodness and benevolence of God is what has showered us with all the blessings of heaven which we do not deserve the least. We will always remain unprofitable servants of God, because we have a sin nature that could easily trip us from the right path of God by our spiritual pride which made Lucifer the great archangel to become a devil that he is now (Gal 6:1, 3). Never forget the duty to serve God first with patience and perseverance, and without fail you will receive His great temporal as well as the eternal reward forevermore! Hallelujah!
GLORY TO GOD!
Much Blessings...
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