Q: What is faith?
A: It is knowing that something will happen before it happens. Heb 11:1
Faith: Pistis (Greek), meaning persuasion, moral conviction, reliance.
Q: Can God increase your faith, your reliance on what He said is true and will happen?
A: The answer is “No.” Luk 17:5,6
Q: So, if God cannot increase our faith and we only need a little bit (the size of a mustard seed), how can we go from “little faith” to “great faith”?
A: Faith comes by hearing from God. Rom 10:17
Explanation
Jesus did many miracles and taught the people. Some believed what He said and some things He said just went over their heads.
An example is when Peter asked Jesus if he could come to Him walking on the water. Jesus gave permission and Peter started walking. When he saw the wind and waves, he became afraid and started to sink. Jesus blamed Peter for having little faith.
But Peter did start walking – so he had faith, more than a mustard seed. But Peter saw the circumstances and then doubted.
This “little faith” of Peter was therefore an indication of how strong his faith was in what Jesus said and not the amount of faith. If it was the amount of faith, then the little bit of faith he had in the beginning of the walk would have sufficed.
God can tell us to do things and we can believe what He said (have faith that it will actually happen). But our faith will be tested, things will happen that would cause us to question what we believe, what we know will happen. When we start to doubt that what Jesus said will happen, things that we just KNEW would happen, might not happen. Mat 21:21, Mar 11:23, James 1:6-8.
There are a lot of instructions in the Bible, the way God wants us to live to have a great life and to satisfy Him. He wants us to be happy, but it is our choice. Deu 30:19.
Jesus talks about “great faith”, “little faith” not “more faith” or “less faith”. It has nothing to do with the amount, but with the quality of faith, knowing that what God says is true and will happen.
Our Problem
We start walking on the water so to speak, and then circumstances causes us to change our minds about what God said. Instead of looking at ourselves and correcting our mistakes, we search the Bible for excuses why things are not the way God told us.
We can call our faith “Experiential Faith” – we will believe it only when we see it. And even if we see miracles happen to other people but not to us, we will think that it is staged because if we do not experience it, then it is not true, it is fake news.
Humans cannot accept two truths that contradict each other. We have to find a way to reconcile these “truths”, that is the way our brains are structured. The easiest way to reconcile these “truths” is to classify one of them as “false”.
Sometimes we have two contradicting truths that are both true:
Truth 1: We are sick
Truth 2: Jesus said through His stripes we are healed.
They cannot both be true, so one of them must give in to the other. Either the Bible is incorrect or we are not sick. Because we have the symptoms and we do not want to call God a liar, we have to change what the Bible said. So we change what the Bible said to: “When we get to heaven Jesus stripes will heal us all” or “it is meant figuratively, not literally.”
But what we should have said was “I know that I am sick. I do not deny that reality. But I refuse to believe that this reality has any authority over me, God’s Word is my authority. So sickness, leave in the name of Jesus.”
But what happens when we have said those words and it does not happen? Then you can go to the doctor (little faith” or you can instruct that sickness to leave because you know it will – not think it will, KNOW that it will (great faith).
How do we get this “great faith”?
We need to be in contact with God, hear from Him. We may go to Him every time to hear whether we may call on His stripes to be healed, or we can go to Him and ask whether these stripes are valid for any and all sicknesses that may come our way.
Once we have that answer, we need to stick with that answer and know that God tells the truth (great faith).
God’s Word and Circumstances Contradict each other
Why is it so difficult to believe God’s Word when circumstances indicates that His Word does not really mean what it says?
There are four reasons – Math 13, Mark 4:
- Some read it, but does not understand what it means and it goes out the window.
- Some has no backbone and when something goes wrong, they are offended at God’s Word and they get cross with God.
- Some become so busy with every day life that God’s Word gets pushed into the background and they make other plans like working harder to get more money, they spend more money on security to be safe, they go to the doctor to be healed etc.
- Some hear it, understand that God’s Word is always valid even for them and they prosper – “some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”