Objection: You Can’t Build Up Faith Yourself Because It Is a Gift from God

This is similar to the objection Faith Is a Gift from God (Ephesians 2:8), So You Can’t Believe Unless God Gives You the Faith to Do It, so you should read the response to that objection along with this section.  This section will just deal with the nuances of this particular objection.

This objection would sit well with lazy Christians who don’t want to do anything because they want God to do everything.  If this objection were true, you would have no responsibility to build your own faith because it would all be up to God.  So I guess you could just go watch televised sports, play violent kill-everything-that-moves video games, or whatever other unspiritual activity you want because it wouldn’t make any difference if you study the Word or pray.  If God wanted you to have faith, you would.

But this objection can be reworded this way: “When God gives a gift, there’s nothing you can do to enhance it because everything is up to God.”  But this is not borne out by Scripture.

Jesus told of giving different men different amounts of money.  That money was given on a gift basis; the men had done nothing to earn it.  But He then expected the men to do something with it.  He called the servant wicked and lazy who just buried it in the ground and did nothing with it.  Faith is a gift, but God expects you do something with it.  Namely, use it!  The more you use it, the easier it gets to use it in the future.  Also, faith for specific things comes from hearing the Word of God, but it is up to YOU whether you attend to the Word or just do carnal stuff all the time.

Even in the natural, God gave me a musical gift.  I started playing the piano when I was four, did my first appearance as a symphony orchestra soloist at the age of seven, was the featured soloist at a symphony orchestra concert at twelve, and did my own hour-long piano recitals at the New England Conservatory of Music and at a rented middle school auditorium at the age of sixteen.  But I was not able to do those things by sitting on my gift thinking that everything would just happen automatically.  I took 12 years of piano lessons during that time, practiced an hour a day, and went up to 3 or 4 hours a day before I did those recitals.  The gift was from God, but I had to do a LOT of work to develop the gift that God had given me. It was not all automatic even though God was the source of the gift.

It is like the story of the farmer who had someone remark about what God had done giving him a big harvest in his field.  He said, “You should have seen it when God had it all to Himself!”  The farmer still had his part to play.  God’s Word is seed, but it is OUR responsibility to be good ground so that there can be an abundant harvest instead of a trampled, withered or weed-choked crop.

It must be possible to grow a lot in faith because the Thessalonians’ faith grew exceedingly (2 Thessalonians 1:3).  Paul did not say that of every church.  Because God is no respecter of persons (that is, not a favorites-player), if the Thessalonians’ faith grew exceedingly, that same “exceedingly growing faith gift” would have to have been given to everyone.  Also, Paul didn’t say that God just handed the Thessalonians that exceedingly growing faith.  He urged Timothy to STUDY (the Greek word means “endeavor” as opposed to stuffing one’s face in books, though studying the Word is essential to accomplish the goal Paul mentioned, which is rightly dividing the Word of truth) to show himself approved (2 Timothy 2:15)).  The Word is God’s gift to us, but if you don’t study it, you could be a disapproved minister because you’ll preach garbage instead of the Word.  You have to put forth the effort to know what the Word says.