I’m trying to work harder at working harder. What I mean is that there are areas of my life where I am trying harder to do better. I want to eat better, think better, exercise better, and, most importantly, have better faith. I want to work harder to have better faith. How about you?

I’ve always wondered how two people with the same opportunities to grow their faith can have two levels of faith. One person can be so strong, and the other person can be so weak. Why is that? People come to me all the time and tell me how they want to build their faith to be more like their strong brothers and sisters around them. They want their faith to be built higher than where it is now. So the question is, how can we build our faith? But before we answer that question, it would be wise for us to ask why I should even worry about trying to build my faith. Here are a few good reasons: 

  1. God desires your faith to grow. In Matthew 17:14-20, Jesus heals a man who is possessed by a demon, and His disciples question and ask Him why they could not drive out the demon. Jesus tells them it’s because of the littleness of their faith. Jesus then goes on to say that they need to have faith as a mustard seed. Not that their faith is to be small indefinitely, but that even though it starts small will eventually grow. Jesus has already explained this back in Matthew 13:31-32, where He tells the parable of the mustard seed. He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR come and NEST IN ITS BRANCHES.” Jesus wants your faith to grow. Yes, it might start small, but it needs to get bigger, better, and progressively stronger. 
  2. You are either moving forward or backward.  – The Hebrew author says in Hebrews 5:11-12, “Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.” Here the author is explaining that at this point in their lives, his readers should be mature but instead have to go back to the elementary things. You are finger painting and playing with blocks, and you should be doing long division by now. You’re like a baby who only drinks milk, and you should be eating solid food. If you are not taking in what is needed for your mature bodies, you will be unhealthy adults. The point is that if you are not moving forward, then you are moving backward. There is to be no stagnant state in your Christian faith. Your faith is either progressive or regressive. 
  3. If our faith is not growing, then our congregations will not grow. Ephesians 4:14-16 says, “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”  Paul explains that we can’t be like children who are influenced by every wind of whatever is happening around them. We have to be adults who are growing up in all aspects into Christ. This spiritual growth equates to spiritual and numerical growth, and it depends on each individual person to commit to their own growth in faith so that the congregation experiences growth that is paralleled. I grow, you grow, and therefore we grow in our faith. Our faith is built communally.

In summary, we should want to build our faith because God wants us to grow, we want to move forward and not backward, and we want to contribute to the overall growth of the entire church. 

Are you ready to build your faith?

I love you,

Alex