- Stepping Out in Faith: What’s Your Trust Level?
- How Can My Faith Grow?
As I mentioned in the previous post, the first time I preached was at an end-of-Vacation Bible School service. VBS was a week-long event for children, culminating with a Sunday night service to which the parents were invited.
I didn’t volunteer to speak that night. I was “voluntold” to do so. I had, and still struggle with, a fear of public speaking. Standing in front of a group of people, with all eyes and ears on me, was terrifying.
I found myself in a quandary. The topic of the message was faith, which is what the kids had learned about all week. Here I was, preparing to preach on faith while struggling to trust that God would help me. All the worst “what ifs” ran through my mind. What if I forget what to say? What if I’m so bad they never bring their children back to church? What if I pass out? What if, what if, what if. I was living the message as I prepared it. I had to learn faith before I could teach faith.
I was perfectly comfortable ministering in a church without speaking to a crowd. But God doesn’t call us to comfort. He calls us to live for him in faith. He calls us to live an adventure! And the only way we can live life as an adventure with God is to live by faith.
How do we get faith? How can we have a growing, increasing faith? Most of what follows is from my message that night, with most of the outline supplied by the VBS curriculum publisher, Gospel Light. It certainly isn’t an exhaustive list, but here are some things we can do to grow our faith.
First, maintain a regular time of Bible reading and prayer. Reading the Bible is vital to spiritual health. Read it regularly. Make it a part of your daily routine. I wrote about this here and here. Reading the Bible is where you encounter God; it’s where he speaks to you personally. The Bible is not just a book, as the writer of Hebrews says:
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
Your Father will change you and grow you through his Word. Make reading it a part of your daily routine.
Prayer is also involved in growing your faith. My faith is sometimes mixed with doubt. In any situation, I know that God can. Sometimes, though, I worry about whether he will. It’s in those times that I ask God to give me faith. When your belief meets your unbelief, that’s where you’ll find Jesus.
On the night Jesus told Peter that he would betray him, Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31-32). Did you catch that? Jesus had prayed that Peter’s faith wouldn’t fail.
Jesus does the same for us. When you need faith, Jesus is praying for your faith. It’s a double whammy. When your faith is weak, both you and Jesus are praying for your faith.
If you want more faith, spend regular time in Bible reading and prayer, and ask God to give you the faith you need in every situation.
A second way our faith can grow is by obeying the teachings in the Bible. It requires faith to do this, especially when the Bible is counter-culture. It isn’t easy to go against the flow of the world around you. But obeying Christ will grow our faith.
There are many times when we don’t feel like obeying. I don’t always feel like forgiving, putting others first, or being nice to people who’ve hurt me or my family. Believe it or not, there are days when I don’t feel like reading my Bible. (By the way, one of my daily prayers is for God to help me always want to read his Word. I even pray Psalm 119:36.)
We live in a world that says, “If it feels good, do it, and if it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it.”
Your Heavenly Father says, “Don’t live by your feelings. Live by faith!”
I read long ago this statement that I’ve found to be true: “If you only obey God when you feel like it, Satan will make sure you don’t feel like it!” Stop living by your feelings, and obey your Heavenly Father who loves you completely.
The third way our faith can grow is through the circumstances of life. God knows that faith is like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it will get. On the other hand, if you never use it, it will atrophy and waste away. That’s why God places us in pivotal circumstances where we have to trust.
In those weeks leading up to my first message, I spent lots of time in preparation. I read and studied and wrote and tried to memorize. I immersed myself in the Bible and prayer. God used all that to help me do what he’d called me to do. That Sunday night, I was sweating, I was scared to death, and I was praying I wouldn’t pass out. Somehow, when I got to the microphone, I started talking. My mouth moved, and sound came out. The rest was a blur. I’m sure no one in the audience thought, “Yeah if this guy’s here, this is where I want to go to church!”
All I knew was that God had placed me in this situation, and I was totally dependent on him. And my faith grew a little that night. Then, the next time God placed me in a situation where I had to trust him, my faith grew a little more.
That’s how faith grows. You go through a trying time and see how God comes through for you, and your faith grows stronger and stronger. You learn that you can trust God when you’re afraid. You can trust God when you’re hurting. Whether you’re facing disappointment, or you’ve experienced a great loss, or whether you’re just afraid of the future, you can trust him, in part because you can look back and see all the times God came through for you.
I’m not saying that my faith is perfect. Some things have brought me to my knees. But I know I’m tethered to the God who loves me more than I can comprehend and is in complete control of any situation. I spend time reading the Bible, allowing his words to penetrate my soul. I pray constantly, and when I need faith, I ask for faith. And I can look back on all the times I felt this same way before and see how God’s presence and power never wavered, and how I came out on the other side loving and trusting him more than ever.
Read your Bible every day, listening to what God says to you. Develop a lifestyle of prayer, praising him, thanking him, and bringing your requests to him. And, when you face a challenge, remember what he’s done for you in the past and lean into him a little more each time. Exercise your faith, and it will grow.
You’ll be able to live the life of adventure God is calling you to.