Luke 17:5-6--Increase Our Faith

Luke 17:5-6
English Standard Version
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Increase Our Faith
5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

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This statement that the apostles made is in response to all that Jesus has just taught them.  They correctly conclude that the correct response is faith, but they also realize that this faith is something that must be given to them and that they neither possess currently, nor can they do anything to cause themselves to increase their faith or acquire new faith.  All they can do is ask God, in this case the Son of God who was right in front of them, to increase their faith.  What a strange request that we are tempted to just read over very quickly as we're trying to get to the next verse.

Why did they think that Jesus could give them more faith?  We have seen Jesus commend people for having faith, chastise His disciples for their lack of faith, and He told people that their faith had made them well when He performed miracles.  There has been a huge emphasis on faith, faithlessness, and most recently faithfulness in Jesus' parables, but I can't find anywhere where Jesus commands His disciples to ask for their faith to be increased or for God to give them faith they are lacking.  So, it is quite amazing that they came to the conclusion, unless you believe that God is at work in them causing them to think this way in the same way that Jesus said that Peter's confession of Him being the Christ, the Son of the Living God was not something revealed to Peter by man, but that information had to come directly from God Himself.  So it must be with this understanding as well.

Jesus does not seem to grant this request though (at least not right now), although I think we'd all agree that this was a good request for them to make.  Jesus just seems to tell them that they don't need a lot of faith, even the little faith that they have is enough to do great and impossible things (because it is enough for God to act on their behalf).  We do not complete the work ourselves, but we cry out to God in faith that He is willing and able to do that which is impossible (like moving a mountain and casting it into the sea).  If we look at a parallel passage in the book of Matthew, it seems that the disciples still have the fig tree that Jesus cursed on their minds and they wonder if they would ever have enough faith to do something like that, and Jesus seems to tell them that with even a little faith, they will do even greater things.  The important thing is that our faith directs us to trust in God and reminds us to give God the glory for the great work He has done.