“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.” 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 (NIV)
Our faith must be exercised to be strengthened, Amen? We do not automatically receive strong faith – it grows by degrees and by persevering through trials. Just as we do not receive strong muscles by simply walking through the gym door, neither do we receive great faith as soon as we accept Jesus as Savior and Lord. Great faith is best learned from having what we do not want or wanting what we do not have. We learn deep faith by practicing faith and by discovering the faithfulness of our Lord. If he was faithful in the past He will most assuredly be faithful in the present, Amen?
Our faith is a response to true Truth and not feelings. Feelings come and go like the wind. Faith is not magic or automatic rather it remains focused on the Object of our faith and for the believer in Jesus, this means trusting in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We trust in the Triune God Who is able to do “exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or imagine” – equipping us to live as children of light in this dark world – and we are all in practice regarding this. Not one of us is perfect or we would be at home with the Lord.
We must play an active role in putting our faith into operation – it rarely (if ever) grows apart from this. We begin by reminding ourselves of the Truth of Scripture and what God has done in the past. Jesus asked in Scripture “Where is your faith?” to His chosen ones. Again, it is not automatic or magic as we are continually called to strengthen our faith by God’s Word. And our faith is proven by the trials we walk through. Do we abort mission or do we stay the course? We are to take our faith and apply it to the present trials or circumstances as untried faith remains weak. Faith is something we must apply. cGod desires for us to refuse to be controlled by our circumstances rather focus on the fact that the Lord loves us and has our best interest at heart in all He allows. Remember, He is seeking to make us like the Lord Jesus and the promise of Scripture is everything allowed is working towards that end. This is always ultimately for our good and for His glory one never surpassing the other – whether we are discerners of that Truth or not. Faith reminds itself of what it believes and certain of what it knows.
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. Hebrews 11:1-2 (NIV)