By Nathan Householder

What is faith?

Faith is something that we are born with and develop over time. For some, faith comes easy, but for others faith is far more difficult to attain.  Many of us practice faith without even knowing it. Every time you sit in a chair, you have faith that the chair is going to hold you up.  Every time you take a breath of air, you have faith that there is going to be something for you to breath.  Every day you believe that the sun will rise and set just as it always has. I guess faith is pretty simple after all.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

You believe that God exists although you’ve never seen Him. You trust the Word of God, although you never met the men who wrote it. You believe that Jesus Christ will save you from a hell and spend eternity with Him in heaven, but you’ve never seen either of these places. THIS my friend is what faith is.

Let’s now examine faith from a spiritual sense.

Faith is not just a word, but a lifestyle. Rom 1:17 But the righteous man shall live by faith.

There may be times when faith is not always easy. Mainly because we are creatures living in a physical world, striving to reconnect with Christ. It is far easier to trust what we see than to trust what we do not see.

Faith comes to us as a gift from God. However, this faith must be exercised. Just like any muscle in our body, if our faith is not exercised it will wither away. Unfortunately, the only way to strengthen our faith is to test our faith. This is why God allows us to go through trials and tribulations. God wants to know where we stand in our faith, and to allow us to see what areas in our life we need to work on.

It is easy to say to someone who is going through something “just have faith brother”, but it is totally different when YOU are the one having your faith tested. There are times when we will go through rough spots, but that does not mean we are weak in faith. NEVER doubt your faith. When you go through times of unbelief, just tell God “I believe, but please help my unbelief”.

Faith also comes to some as a spiritual gift.

1 Corinthians 12:9

To another, faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one spirit.

We see here that the Gift of Faith is among all the rest of the spiritual gifts. But what about those people who say “well brother, I just don’t have the gift of faith. I guess I will never have complete faith”. If you are among those who say this about faith or any other gift for that matter, you are wrong. Just because faith is not your primary gifting, does not mean you do not have faith. You just don’t have the GIFT of faith. Faith is present in everyone. But there is nothing wrong with desiring the gift of faith or even asking God to give you that gift. He just might do it if you truly desire it.

James 1:17 (NKJV)

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning

Psalms 84:11

No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.

Faith is foundational to Christianity. Without faith, we have absolutely nothing. Everything we read in the Word of God is based solely upon faith. You could possibly even say that faith is the greatest gift of all because all of the other spiritual gifts depend upon faith. We all have a measure of faith, but we must all work at strengthening our faith. A Christian without faith is not a Christian at all, but rather a member of religious organization.