We all have faith. It is one of the determining factors of why we do what we do. You work hard and put in some extra hours because you have faith it will lead to a paycheck and possible promotion. You go to the driving range a few times a month because you have faith the extra practice will drop your golf score. We pay crazy amounts of money to walk into the stadiums of our favorite teams because we have faith they will win (some years, we have more faith than others). Faith is not a foreign concept to us, but faith in God still has us rattled at times. It shouldn’t, though. When we break things down, faith in God has three major components.
Belief.
Faith starts with belief. Faith is belief; the words are somewhat interchangeable. We have to believe God is Who the Bible says He is. And we must believe and see God as the Creator Who has ultimate authority as described in Genesis. Therefore we must believe that Jesus was able to save us from our sins through His death and resurrection explained in the Gospels. We need to see God as the Good Father detailed throughout Scripture. And we need to know that He is with us.
Surrender.
When we believe God’s Word to be true, we have to surrender to that truth. This step is easy and…not so easy. By placing our faith in God, we are removing faith in ourself and giving (surrendering) it to Him. Some areas of our lives are easy to hand over to God—LORD, save me from my sins. God, show me how to lead my family. But some areas we hang onto a little tighter and don’t hand over so quickly—God, I need to make some choices at work You would disapprove of, but it’s best for me, so I’m going to do it.
The type of surrender God requires is absolute. He wants us all in or all out. The half-hearted stuff tends to make Him sick (Revelation 3:15-16). This is not a ridiculous ask on God’s part. We demand the same thing from our spouses. The day we vowed to love her and only her, we made sure she shared the same vow.
Over and over again in the New Testament, the Bible compares the relationship between God and His people to marriage. If we can require complete surrender—no holding back—from our spouse, we have no reason to think God is unfair when He requires it from us.
Commitment.
This step is one of action. Commitment is putting our faith into action. After all, faith isn’t really faith until it drives us to do something. As we trust in the LORD and His ways more than ourselves and our ways, we commit to His leading. And faith will require commitment. There will be times God’s calling won’t make sense or makes us uncomfortable. To follow through with obedience in those uncertain times will require commitment.
You probably won’t know if your faith is genuine until it is tested, put through the fire. In the same way, you don’t really know your level of strength until you have to pick up something heavy; your faith won’t fully reveal itself until something heavy tries to crush it. And like our muscles, faith grows as it’s exercised. Take just one step in faith, and you’ll be strengthened to take another.
Anyone can have faith.
It doesn’t take much faith at all to change our life. And to have a little faith in God probably isn’t as difficult as we make it out to be. If you want faith in God: believe He is Who the Bible says He is, surrender by giving Him control of your life, then commit to His leading. That’s faith.
