Objection: Faith Is a Gift from God (Ephesians 2:8), So You Can’t Believe Unless God Gives You the Faith to Do It

As a general statement, this is true, but not on the individual basis intended by the objector.  The objector is trying to prove that all healing is up to God because you can only receive if you’re in faith, and faith only comes as a gift from God.  According to this illogic, God makes a decision to either give you the faith or not give you the faith to believe for healing in your individual case, and only those to whom He grants that faith can be healed.

Faith IS a gift from God, but you already have it.  God has given to every man the measure of faith (Romans 12:3), and that is His gift to us, not something we worked for.  However, what you do with that faith is NOT up to God; it is completely up to you.

You already HAVE the measure of faith, so it is senseless to talk about God giving you faith on a request-by-request basis.  Your faith is activated when you hear God’s Word.  It then has a target.  Without knowing what God says, you don’t know what to believe, which leaves your faith aimless and unproductive.  When you hear the Word, you learn what Christ has already done for you (including paying for your sicknesses to be healed) and your faith can now latch onto that.

There is no biblical basis for asking God for faith or waiting for God to give you faith for a particular situation!  You HAVE faith already.  Remember, when the disciples asked for more faith, Jesus didn’t hand out more faith; He told them to use the faith that they already had (Luke 17:5-6).  You do not need God to hand you more faith so that you can believe for a particular healing.  You have the faith to believe for that healing.  God gave you faith already, and if you’ve been feeding your faith on the Word, you know God’s will on the specific matter of healing, so you can use your faith to receive your healing.

Now consider Jesus’ attitude toward His disciples.  He got exasperated with them when they didn’t use their faith.  He’d say things like, “How long do I have to put up with you?” when they didn’t cast a demon out after being given the power to do it, or “Where is your faith?” when they feared that they were going to drown in a storm when Jesus had already said, “Let us go over to the other side,” or “Why did you doubt?” when Peter started to sink after he had initially walked on water in faith.  If they could only believe if God gave them case-by-case faith, His exasperation would have been unfair, as they would have no way to manufacture their own faith if God didn’t give them that special case-by-case faith.  So it is obvious that they had faith and that Jesus expected them to use the faith that they already had, not petition God for it or hope to receive a special delivery of faith from heaven for a particular situation.  In Peter’s case, he had started acting in faith, but then he got his eyes on the natural circumstances and he started to sink.  It is obvious from Jesus’ remark that Peter DID have the faith to continue his water walk.  The issue was that Peter got focused on the wind and the waves (the external circumstances) more than on the word that the Lord gave him.  It wasn’t a faith shortage; it was a focus problem.