I spent some time with a close friend this weekend and a part of our get-togethers usually involve watching Grey’s Anatomy. I have seen all of the seasons, but I never noticed this particular statement by Izze Stevens until now when I watched a particular episode for the second time.
Meredith was dying, and it did not seem as if she would survive. One friend, Kristina, does not believe she will make it. She is dependent upon science and rejects the possibility of miracles, and leaves the hospital to cope with the reality of Meredith’s impending death.
Another friend tries to forget about it and throws himself into the work of helping others. The other friends wait in sorrow, yet Izze Stevens waits in hopeful expectation that Meredith will survive and believes that miracles can happen. This is the woman who lost the man she loved just weeks ago. Somehow she is able to believe that anything can happen. And she says, “I believe that in believing we survive.”
In the context of Christianity, this statement means so much. In faith, in believing that Christ died for us and has the power to defeat all sin and resurrect us one day, we are saved. Faith is the most crucial element in our relationship with God.
We survive in believing, not only in the context of our salvation, but also in the context of believing that God will meet us in our pain and help us.
Faith is an essential element in asking God to answer our prayers. We MUST believe that he hears us and can do what we ask of him. In Jeremiah 32: 27 God says, “I am the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?” Jeremiah echoes this truth and says, “Behold you have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for you!”
As we believe God in hard times, we must acknowledge the reality that what we want to happen may not come to pass. But, instead of agonizing over it, or living in despair before that outcome, we must be like Izze Stevens and wait in hopeful expectation–believing that it can happen while also knowing it might not.
We approach the Lord as David did in the Psalms. Psalms 5:3 says, “In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; In the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.” James also tells us to approach God this way in saying, “When he asks he must believe and not doubt; that man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord.”
Is faith the determining factor that our prayers will be answered? No, but in praying with faith we receive peace and strength–the ability to survive any outcome.
