Judges 13-15 Do you trust God to answer your prayers? If God were to measure it on a meter stick, what would it say? In these chapters, we meet a couple who are childless. We wonder if they had prayed for a child for a short time or a long time. Time matters nothing in God’s eyes. What matters to God is the depth of our faith.

In these chapters, we meet a barren woman who has been praying for a child and as she works in the field she encounters the angel of God who announces that her prayer has been answered. In her excitement, she tells her husband about this news but her husband, Manoah, is a man who faces a crisis of belief. He prays that the man would return and confirm this news. And so God responds by returning and confirming the news. As Manoah listens, he wants to offer a meal to this unexpected guest. As the meal is poured out and received, the “guest,” a.k.a the Angel of the Lord, ascends to heaven and Manoah’s crisis of belief resurrects itself! “surely we will die for we have seen God.” [Judges 13:22]

Now we see what true faith is: Mrs. Manoah told her husband, look at the evidence! God answered our prayer! He accepted our offering! He wouldn’t have shown us these things or let us hear something like this if he wanted to kill us! [Judges 13:23] While Manoah was wallowing in his crisis of belief, Mrs. Manoah’s faith was strengthened and God opened her womb and gave her a son.

When God speaks, do we believe Him 100 %! What does our faith meter reveal?