Have you ever had someone tell you that “you just need to have faith”? When I was a young child in Sunday School and the teacher would ask: “What is faith?” Then someone smarter than myself would blurt out: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) That left me wanting an explanation of the definition!
Almost 40 years ago I heard a simple definition of what faith is! “Faith is trusting God with everything and He will do what is best.” I thought about that for several weeks-especially since that was a period of ongoing trials in my own life…the following is how I changed that to become my own definition and encouragement with faith: “Faith is trusting God with EVERYTHING at all times, in all situations, KNOWING that He will do what is right, what is good and what is best.” I always kept that on my desk at work and at home and also on our refrigerator.
Many, many times that “faith quote” has been a great encouragement to me. But there have also been times when I could barely read it because my heart was broken and my eyes were full of tears…one time I remember was in 2001 when I discovered that a trusted employee and friend had almost embezzled my company out of business! I remember thinking “what is right, what is good and best?” That was the result of living in a broken world full of sin. Eventually, God (not me) restored most of the customer relations, brought us many new customers and we were set-up for the trying times that were about to start when my first wife started getting sick again.
Another time that the words to that “faith quote” were next to impossible to even look at for a while was when my first wife passed away. That was a though one…I wasn’t doubting God, I just had a broken heart. That’s when your faith better be strong, fortunately mine was strong enough to trust God to get me through the grief and he did.
So, how do we get our faith in God to grow? Many times, God uses trials in our lives to grow our faith. My faith in God has grown in my life especially during all my years of trials. Those trials caused me to spend a lot of time in God’s Word (the Bible) and prayer-talking to God, asking for strength. So many times, as I would be reading the Bible and talking to God, verses from His Word would just “jump out” when I needed them most! Then instead of feeling defeated-I would almost feel like my team had won the Superbowl!
…”Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.” 2 Peter 1:5-7 (NLT)
The years I spent working with my father in his general store also helped shape my mind set for life’s “ups and downs”. Dad was really quick to “step-in” and try to tell me something positive when I’d made a mistake or things were going bad…He also would temper the excitement if things really were too good to be true! Dad always seemed to have a calming effect, and it made me want to please him.
I think most of us would also like to please God. By now, we probably also remember that we can’t please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6). That’s why it really is important that we each work on and strengthen our own “faith walk”. “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.” James 1:22 (NLT)
Till Next Time…..
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