I meant what I said

“Because you have little faith,” he said. “I assure you that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Go from here to there,’ and it will go. There will be nothing that you can’t do.” (Matthew 17:20)

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of play on words you can come up with when combining religion and cell phones, we probably thought of it last Friday. A group of us stood outside the Apple stores in Chicago in conjunction with the release of the iPhone 7 and offered to bless electronic devices and as we stood there for two hours, we came up with such gems as “holy rollover minutes.”

Whenever I do this kind of on-the-street evangelism, it’s always a little awkward at first and then I get used to it and then I start to wonder to myself, do I really believe what I’m saying? Do I feel it? That’s a pretty key question. Because if the answer is no, then, it’s kind of a waste of time, isn’t it? Or is it?

John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist movement in England in the 18th century, was once discouraged because he felt like he was preaching the gospel but really wasn’t sure he believed what he was preaching. Should he stop? He asked the question of a colleague named Peter Bohler. Peter said, by no means: “Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.” Wesley took that advice to heart and continued on building one of the most influential religious movements in history.

To be honest, not a lot of people took us up on our offer to bless their phones and it was easy to get discouraged so my calls out to people walking by were half-hearted at times. But we all stayed with it, sometimes with faiths as small as mustard seeds and at the end, we gave each other high fives for sticking with it, even when we doubted our effectiveness.

Being faithful sometimes means going through the motions and trusting that God receives what we have to offer and then trusting that believing and feeling what we say will follow, too.