faith

This morning I attended a men's breakfast and we discussed faith. The question was ask what makes up faith. What is faith. The Bible says that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Heb 11:1. The question became what is the substance that makes up faith in us, how does faith grow?

We are to come to Christ as a child. That means with a child like faith. A child has the ability to have a faith that is based on trust. A child will trust and believe its parents until they find that the parents do not always keep their word. That is the way we are to come to Christ. We come with the trust that he will do as he promised. That is an element of faith.

As we develop our relationship with Christ we need to add other elements of faith. One of these is knowledge. We need to know that the trust that we had in the beginning is correct. We have the need to know that God always keeps His Word. How then can we know this? We need to study His word. If we study we find that through out the Bible God was always faithful to those who trusted Him. He always kept His word. Sometimes His word had to be a punishment, both wither it was for punishment for disobedience or a blessing He always kept his word.

Through obedience we also grow in faith. As we trust Him we find that He always leads us. He always keeps His word. As we trust and obey Him He is faithful to lead us. This will bring about a growth in our faith. We must keep our eye on Him and not let the world sway us. The world can cause us to start questioning God, and this brings in a loss of faith.

Jesus said that we only need the faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain. We all face mountains that only by faith can we move. We can not see a way out of a problem, or an illness. These are mountains to us. But remember Jesus said we can move that mountain with faith. By faith in Christ the mountain is moved, not by us but by Christ because of our faith. God created all things and He alone can change anything.

These are but 3 elements of faith. I challenge all who read this to think about what makes up their faith. Is their faith growing, stable, declining? If it is not growing, why is it not? Are you letting the things of this world drag your faith down? Do you feel God has not answered a prayer? Maybe you need to find out if God has answered the prayer but not the way you want. Sometimes no is an answer. My brothers and sisters we need to always be studying His word. As we do we will grow, in faith as we find more about the loving God we serve. He will never not answer, He is always trustworthy.