You Have Faith
If you are a believer, you already know how to believe God. You have faith. Without faith, you could not have been saved, because you are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Don’t allow Satan to tell you that you don’t have any faith or that you cannot believe God. Those are lies.
You currently believe that you have something you cannot see. You believe that you are going to heaven and that you have eternal life right now. Yet you cannot see it or prove it in the natural. You could point to outward signs of being nicer than you used to be, but there are “nice” sinners out there on their way to hell, too. The only proof you have of your salvation is your faith. Faith is the assurance of something you cannot see (Hebrews 11:1).
You are betting your entire eternal future on something you can’t see. You became a new creature in Christ, which is a greater work than a physical healing, by exercising faith in what Christ did for you on the cross. You have faith!
Romans 12:3 says that God has given to every man the measure of faith. So God says that you have faith. Don’t side in with the devil and say, “I guess I just don’t have any faith,” because then you are lying just like the devil. If God says that you have faith, you do. Don’t take sides against God!
Ephesians 2:8-9 says that faith is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is the Author and the Finisher of your faith. Now what kind of faith do you suppose that the Lord gave you? Defective faith? Faith that won’t get the job done? Inferior faith that leaves you wondering how other people can believe when you can’t? Was God foolish enough to give you every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3) but then give you faith that is unable to receive EVERY SINGLE ONE of those blessings? That would make part of what Jesus did for you be wasted effort! Would He pay for everything by grace but then give you inferior faith that is unable to access all of this grace (Romans 5:2)? NO!
Your faith is a gift from Someone who cannot give you anything that doesn’t work. Every good and perfect gift comes from God (James 1:17), and faith is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9). Therefore, the faith that God gave you is good and perfect – not defective. Your faith DOES work if you’ll USE it! Think of righteousness. Romans 5:17 says that righteousness is a gift also. Is God going to put out a recall notice on your righteousness someday because it isn’t perfect? No, your righteousness is already perfect right now. You will not be more righteous in heaven than you are right now! Likewise, your faith is a gift from God with no defects. If you struggle, the issue is with your still-unrenewed mind or your flesh, not your faith.
Are you stuck with Regular Person Faith while the early apostles got Special Early Apostolic Faith? No, Peter wrote to Christians and said that they had obtained “like precious faith with us”– faith that is equally as valuable as what Peter and his company had (2 Peter 1:1)! You got the same “measure of faith” (Romans 12:3) that they had, not some fraction of it. The Greek word metron used for “measure” denotes a fixed amount, just as a kitchen “measure” (which is what Paul means here) is made to contain a certain fixed amount. God doesn’t give some people Whopping Big Humungo-Faith and give other people Puny Little Faith. Some people just do more with their faith than other people.
Notice that Peter was writing to those who had obtained like precious faith, not to those who had worked up like precious faith! You received the same quality of faith that Peter had, and Peter was able to do signs and wonders by faith. It is something you have, not something you work up.
I received the same number of muscles in my body that any movie action hero has. However, the action hero did more to develop his muscles than I did. I can’t blame God for that or accuse God of giving the action hero more muscles than He gave me. It came down to what we did with our God-given muscles.
God says that faith and love are in Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 1:14, 2 Timothy 1:13). Because you are in Christ Jesus, you can walk in faith and walk in love. (Greek Note: The King James Version could lead you to believe that only love is in Christ Jesus because of the use of the word is instead of are after “faith and love” – “the faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” However, there is no verb “to be” (is or are) in the Greek in either of the verses just cited; it’s literally just “faith and love in Christ Jesus,” so translating this as “faith and love which are in Christ Jesus,” as in the NKJV, is justified.)
Don’t become introspective, trying to evaluate how much faith you have. If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can move a mountain if you use your faith. Concentrate on God’s promises and speak them out loud. The more you hear God’s Word, the more you will water that divine seed, and it will become natural for you to say what God says. The main thing that hearing God’s Word will do is cause your mind to be renewed to be in harmony with God. Then your mind won’t fight the real you – your spirit.
Take the pressure off of yourself to try to “manufacture” or “crank out” faith. YOU are not the source of your faith – God is. Remember that faith is NOT of yourself – it is the gift of God, not of works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Your faith will grow if you’ll keep using it and feeding it the Word, but instead of feverishly trying to whip up “enough” faith, just act on the Word once you know what it says – using the faith that God already gave you! Just act like the Bible is so – because it is! If God said, “If you do A, you will get result B,” then go do A and be absolutely sure that you will get result B because God always backs His Word. He cannot lie.
Want a real mind-stretcher? Jesus was a REAL Man, not just God in a man costume. That means that He had to operate under the limitations that would belong to any other man. Therefore, JESUS was given the same measure of faith that YOU have! He used His more, but He didn’t get more faith than you got! Let that fact soak in and it will be easier for you to see yourself doing the same works that Jesus did.
You need to spend time in God’s Word if you want to grow in your faith walk, but you don’t have to be in it every waking minute to have strong faith. Did you know that God understands that people have jobs and families? He didn’t structure things so that only those who can hide out with a Bible all day (if there are any such people) can develop enough faith to receive all His blessings! Now you might not have enough time to study the Word AND be on social media for hours every week, so some of this comes down to establishing godly time management habits.
Jesus told you to “have faith in God” (Mark 11:22) and then He talked about what your faith could do. Jesus could not command you to do this if it were impossible! Therefore, you can have faith in God. You can speak to mountains and move them. Don’t go around saying that you just can’t believe God. Go around saying that you can believe God, because Jesus said that you can! Then believe God, acting on what He said! You WILL get the results that He promised.
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