How to Strengthen Your Faith

I had a basketball coach my senior year in high school who was really quite good. He struck a superb balance between discipline and genuine concern for our lives away from the court. But one thing was certain in his system of coaching: practice was not optional. And each practice always contained multiple repetitions of the "basics," or fundamentals, of basketball. We repeatedly worked on defending, passing, dribbling, and shooting (in that order). These disciplines, though often "boring" and unglamorous, proved very beneficial at game time. Developing such second nature fundamentals typically resulted in victory over a less-disciplined team.

Faith is fundamental to a life pleasing to God. The Bible tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). Since this is true, it might behoove us to understand what faith is and how we can exercise it to its maximum potential in our lives.

Some common definitions of faith include:

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance.

Faith is also closely linked to belief, which can be defined as the mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another. So, we see that faith is a complex combination of belief in the truth, especially that which is unseen, and disciplined loyalty to the one being trusted. Faith, therefore, is intangible in the sense that it does not have a means to measure it - at least we human beings cannot measure it. Faith is intensely personal, but in God's kingdom it can also be expressed corporately.

The difficulty most Christians (or anyone for that matter) have when it comes to faith is understanding how to strengthen it. How do you take something that cannot be measured and is reliant on belief and "strengthen" it? It's a tough question, but one worth examination. In order to answer this question intelligently, one must first understand that the "strength" of faith is dependent on the strength of its object. In other words, faith is only "strong" if the one being believed in is strong. Therefore, as Christians, our faith only "strengthens" as we surrender more fully to God's control. "He must increase, I must decrease."

Jesus made this principle clear when He responded to his disciples desperate pleas for increased faith by stating, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you." None of the disciples could be strong enough to achieve such a feat, especially by only using their words. But through faith the size of a tiny mustard seed they could accomplish such an impossible task, because of the strength of the One in whom they expressed their faith was able to do it. This "less is more" principle is precisely the route to strengthening faith. Why? Because less of us means more of God living through us - and that is strength!

So, what does my high school coach have to do with strengthening faith? His relentless emphasis on the basics is a reminder to me that faith is a "basic" to a life pleasing to God. If I get distracted by believing that anything other than a life lived by faith can please God, I slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) drift toward self-reliant thinking. Such self-reliance is not only displeasing to God, but it also always leads to poor choices and various degrees of heartache and dissatisfaction. A life lived by faith in God, however, leads to righteousness, peace, and joy.

Let us work to get our focus off our "abilities" (which really aren't impressive to a holy God anyway), and instead "fix our eyes on Jesus." With faith the size of a mustard seed we might just uproot some longstanding trees of pride, lust, envy, and more.

Uprooting...by faith,

jonathan