We know that we need to have faith in God to live our lives to the fullest. But how do we get it? Where does faith come from?
One day when my daughter, Leslie, was young, she came home from school very excited. As she slammed the door and threw down her books, Leslie told me that she had prayed with a friend to receive Jesus as Savior. She went on to say that she had asked Jack if he believed in his heart that Jesus was raised from the dead. He tensed every muscle in his body, scrunched up his face, held his breath, and gasped, “yes.”
Aren’t we like that? We feel as if we need to try harder to somehow conjure up the necessary faith. We strain harder, but it just doesn’t happen.
Well, there’s a reason that we can’t conjure it up. Faith doesn’t come that way. We can’t force ourselves to have great faith by tensing our bodies or holding our breath. Faith is a natural outgrowth of meditating on the word of God.
Romans 10:17 says “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” So why two “hearings?” That word for hearing in the Greek is “rhema.” It refers to God speaking to you. In other words, when you read the Bible, God begins to speak to your heart. It’s truly a supernatural thing that happens. You read and meditate on the word of God and you begin to hear God speaking to you personally. As you hear that, you find yourself believing.
I believe that one of the greatest miracles in our world today is the Bible. God, over hundreds of years, spoke to men and gave them His wisdom. He laid down His plans and revealed His nature. Centuries before Jesus came to the earth, God spoke through Isaiah and others, telling of the sacrifice that Jesus would accomplish. At first people didn’t understand it, but later, when Jesus fulfilled the scripture, men were able to “get it.”
If you haven’t read your Bible much in awhile – or ever – I challenge you. Begin to read it on a regular basis. And don’t just read it. Find some scriptures which are especially speaking to you, and say them over to yourself throughout the day. Ponder them. Let them stay in the forefront of your mind. You will begin to believe what you are saying.
Just as the physical food you eat automatically becomes nutrition for your body, this spiritual food of God’s word will strengthen and develop your spirit and you will find yourself growing in spiritual strength. Your faith will grow by itself as you feed your spirit.
Life is truly an adventure when we nourish our spirits this way. God’s plan is such a great one, if we will just get in on it!
Forever Upward!
Suellen Estes
