We can be told to “just have more faith” or even pray for more faith, but there are also specific steps we can take to help strengthen our faith.
“Faith is on the rise,” reports The Guardian magazine, “and 84% of the global population identifies with a religious group.”
The article more or less touts this as a positive statistic, but its stance only brings up the real questions: “What are people putting their faith in?” and “How does this faith help people?”
What and Who Do You Trust?
Faith is simply defined as “allegiance to duty or a person” or “complete trust” in the dictionary.
Often this is held up as a purely positive trait. “Well, I have faith that—” fill in the blank, and that’s meant to silence all opposition because faith is sacrosanct somehow. However, it can and often is misused or misplaced.
David Wilkerson described this mentality—unfortunately found nearly as often in the church as anywhere else—in one of his sermons, “Many preachers today totally humanize the topic of faith. They describe faith as if it exists only for personal gain or to meet self-needs.”
This kind of belief that “good things are coming to me no matter what if only I have faith” sets belief up as an ultimate end to be achieved.
At that point, faith becomes the religious-y equivalent to Peter Pan’s command to just “believe you can fly.”
Avoiding a Brittle Foundation
The book of Hebrews points to the only place where our faith will not be disappointed: “…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” (Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV).
We have to have faith in God, his promises and his Word. Anything outside of that will eventually disappoint us, regardless of how much faith we have.
In the same sermon, David Wilkerson explained the solution, “…As we read Hebrews 11, we find a single common denominator to the lives of the people mentioned. Each had a particular characteristic that denotes the kind of faith God loves. What was this element? Their faith was born of deep intimacy with the Lord.”
That intimacy comes from constant conversation with God. By investigating and pursuing God’s will, we don’t lose sight of where our faith must reside.
An example of a brittle faith that drifted off course was the religious leaders in the Bible. They had dedicated themselves to studying God’s Word and had great faith in the coming of the Messiah, but only in their version of him.
Their faith couldn’t stand to be questioned and flared up defensively at anything that rattled the preconceived notions at its foundation.
Faith at the Center of Doubt
In his podcast on the subject of doubt, Gary Wilkerson explored one vital way that faith becomes intimate. “There's a doubt that can lead towards an unhealthy, unresolved conflict with God; but the kind of doubt that I'm talking about, that I enjoy, is to take ideas, concepts, world views, and then question them.”
He offered up a series of healthy questions Christians can ask themselves to help their faith grow into a healthier place: “‘Do I really believe this? Is it something I want to believe? What's the impact of this belief?’”
In order to have this attitude toward the world and our own beliefs, we have to dwell in a place of faith, an abiding trust in God’s all-knowing, all-powerful presence.
To truly question is to believe there are answers. Even when we can’t see a solution to the problems we present God with or don’t hear an answer right away, we must trust that he has one that we’re either not ready for yet or aren’t meant to understand.
“The alternative is kind of a...smug faith,” Gary explains.
“It says, ‘I know it all, I've got it all. It's all contained in my dogma. I don't need to be challenged on this. I don't need to be stretched on it. As a matter of fact, if you do challenge me, if you say something from the pulpit or in a book or in a conversation that starts making me doubt the previous status quo that I've had before then I go off, I either run from you, or I reject it…’”
If we honestly pursue answers in God and his word, then our faith will grow in ways that the world cannot shake.