Increasing Your Faith

     That is step number one: Get real. Last summer, I was sick of the way my life was going and I was sick of my unbelief, so I started to tell God what was really in my heart. I had no desire to seek Him, and I told Him that. I didn't trust Him, and I told Him that. But at the same time, I told Him that I wanted desperately to have a desire for Him, and that I wanted desperately to believe in Him and in His Word. It took months of crying out for faith, when God finally decided I was ready for step two.

     Step two: I had to allow God to strip the idols out of my life. My main idol at this point, was the relationship I was in. I wanted to believe God, but whatever faith I had was invested into this relationship rather than in Him, and I could never let go and trust completely in Him (but I wanted to). So God broke off the relationship, and immediately I met with God.

     Father spoke to me through an example involving one of our cats. I came home from church one Sunday, and I heard a cat crying and soon realized that it was stuck up in a tree (about 30 feet up). So I changed my clothes, got the ladder out and started climbing. When I reached the cat, he got excited and started purring, but when I went to grab him, he clung to the tree. I kept saying, "Why don't you trust me?" And then God kept saying to me, "Why don't you trust Me?" It was a moment of great revelation for me. Finally, I had to force the cat to let go of the tree, and shoved him down into a backpack so I could climb down the tree freely. That is exactly where I am at in my life right now. After God ripped me away from the tree, I had nothing else to cling to but Him. And then He stuffed me down into this dark backpack, but the beautiful thing about this pack is that it is on His chest, close to His heart. (Isaiah 40:11 says, "He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart"). The darkness is no fun; it is very painful, and very emotional, but it is teaching me to trust in Him. Another verse He gave me was Ps 139:12, "Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you."

     Just after God destroyed my major idol, I spent the weekend with an old friend (Phil). The first night with him, God brought us to a cemetery, and it was there that I died once again. I repented of trusting in myself, and every bit of faith I had left (the entire mustard seed of it) I put it back into God. The beautiful thing about faith is that it doesn't matter how much you have or don't have. All that matters is what you do with it. Jesus' example about faith as big as a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20) reveals that it is the quality and not quantity of faith that matters most. The disciples could not drive the demon out in that situation because they failed to ask the Lord for help, in faith (Mark 9:29). With just a small amount of faith, I can still move mountains if it is invested in Jesus. (There is a story about a little girl in Japan that prayed literally for a mountain to move, and the government came in and bull-dozed the mountain away).

     That night at the cemetery, my friend prophesied to me telling me that I have forsaken my first Love, and that I was to do the things I did at first. I was pretty sick of "doing," because I had learned that I can never earn salvation by my own performance. But soon I realized that what I did at first was I read the Word. And not only did I read it, but I meditated on it, which is by far much more important than just reading it (Ps 1:2, 119:148).

     That brings me to my final and most important step to increasing your faith. Step three: Get in the Word. About four years ago, when I was on fire, I spent about an hour every day in the Word. And during this time, I took notes on what I read, writing down Scriptures that appealed to me. So that is the habit that I got back into at the beginning of 2002. And ever since then, my life is radically changing once again. I'm realizing how foolish I was to question God like I did. I read through Job, and saw that He went through a whole lot more than I ever have, and God gave him no right to question. "His understanding no one can fathom" Is 40:28. One of my previous teachers once said, "We know as much about God as a fly knows about nuclear physics." So, why do we consistently think that our way is better than His? We must learn to trust that His way is the best, and this trust will only come from being grounded in His Word. Romans 10:27 says, "Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ." The more you're in the Word, the more open you'll be to hearing, the more you will actually hear God, the more you will actually believe God. Get in the Word!