The greatest treasure in life is FAITH, and it is the most important to possess. Without faith, there is no meaning in life. Many who have stumbled with faith, feel as if they have no purpose and life is meaningless for them.
Faith is the antidote for all psychological issues, and it is proven that those with high-quality faith affect the mental health of an individual.
Faith is as necessary as sustenance is for the body or as gasoline is for a car, in order for it to run properly. When we have no faith, we starve and malfunction in life.
Often times depression, self-doubt (or doubt in general), self-hatred, anxiety, poverty, lack of confidence, etc, are the symptoms of starvation from faith. Faith is so vital, we cannot live without it!
What Is Faith?
How would we define faith? The definition of faith is found in Hebrews 11:1, the confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
In essence, faith is a complete conviction in an unseen reality that is not yet felt or experienced.Faith is feeling, experiencing, and observing a desire cultivated in the imagination, as if we have taken full possession of that desire.
Before faith comes a desire and faith is what opens new doors (the more fuel we use to kindle the burning desire we have), and it pushes us to act to receive it.
Faith is not a matter of words in saying “I have faith” in something or someone, but rather living according to what you have confessed to be true.
If you would say “I have believe that one day I will become a billionaire,” but you don’t live the lifestyle of a billionaire and work towards that goal — that’s not having faith. That’s having a dream that bears no fruit.
In the context of the Kingdom of God, having faith in God is not mere words in saying “I believe in God,” “I trust in God,” or “I love God.”
Unless you set your heart to live His words and principles taught in His constitution, you cannot say you have faith. Because faith is doing, not saying!
We really don’t need to say we believe in the heavenly Father, we don’t even have to mention Him to assure people we are believers in Christ. Christ will simply reflect on the outside of us, the more we imitate Him and become doers of the word of God. THAT’S A GREAT FAITH.
By believing in God you are believing in something you cannot see, feel or hear, or find evidence for. You have a deep conviction that He exists and you have a BURNING DESIRE to know His heart.
That is when you deeply investigate His word, intentions, will, laws, principles (His Kingdom), and you test it by applying it to your own life.
One of the best role models who walked by faith is David. God favored him, for He said about him:
Faith is like walking blindfolded and trusting the process that you will get to your desired destination. Or like driving on the road in the middle of nowhere with no signs to direct you to your destination. But you trust that somehow you will arrive at the location you aimed for, without understanding how.Faith doesn’t always show us the map, we have to trust it will take us to where we desire to go.
How Is Faith Developed And How Can We Use It?
We have perhaps reasoned within ourselves the question “how to have faith?” In reality, it’s not about how to have faith, for we all have the potential of faith within us. But rather how to unlock the potential of faith and use it properly.
Faith is inherent in everybody, it is what we’re born with. However for it to work in our favor, we have to learn how to use it. There are too many of God’s people who misunderstand what it means to have faith.
We often think it’s a confession, and it’s enough to declare to people that we have faith. Everybody can say they have faith, even the devil, but not mean it in their hearts.
The alcoholic on the street can say he has faith and even sing worship songs, or the drug dealers in the gangs, or even the abusive pastors in churches… but would we really believe they mean it?
Faith is a state of mind, it is a powerful faculty that needs attention to be cultivated. Faith cannot be mere words, for it has to be reflected on the outside. Truly faith without works is dead, for it doesn’t count unless it’s evident on the outside.
If you have a desire to become an entrepreneur. You visualize it, it gives you goosebumps and you believe you can have it. However, you spend your time thinking about it, but you lack the willpower to pursue it.
Then it is only a useless idea that is going to take you nowhere, only stay in your mind and give you the frustration that you don’t have it.
The thinker only thinks about the possibilities, but the doer is the one who makes the possibilities a reality. Faith is both, not the other way around.
As I said earlier Faith is feeling, experiencing, and observing a desire cultivated in the imagination, as if you have taken full possession of that desire.
Faith is first formed with a desire or hunger. When a desire is known, you fuel it in your imagination. In your imagination you take possession of it to the point it becomes your obsession.
In other words, faith is formed with a belief, but faith is then the conviction in that UNSEEN REALITY that is real to you because you believe it. And faith is going to make that unseen reality into a visible reality through its good works.
Therefore belief + works = faith. As with the woman in the new testament who suffered from a certain blood condition for twelve years ( as some scholars believe it had been a haemorrhage) had a desire to be healed from her condition.
When she saw Christ Jesus walking by, she believed with a strong conviction that He was able to heal her. Now what she did was not just say she believed, but she actually went behind Him and touched His garment, believing without a doubt that that’s how she will become healed. She truly had a TRUE FAITH.
Jesus responded to her “daughter, your FAITH has made you well.” Another example we can see is when Jesus was walking on the sea of Galilee in the middle of the night, when there was a great storm, troubling the disciples who were in the boat.
When they recognized Him, Peter took courage with a desire in his heart to be rescued. And with a deep conviction that if Jesus could walk on the water with no fear nor worry, he too was able. As we see in the passage, he became dominant of the water and started walking toward Jesus on the sea.
What made Peter stumble was when fear took hold of him and he started to doubt in his heart. Faith requires action according to what you believe. Consequently, a strong belief (a conviction) and works go together. They cannot be separated, for together they are complete, together they make each other whole.
Jesus said to Peter, “you of LITTLE FAITH, why did you doubt?”
Do you notice as you read the new testament that every time Jesus heals a sick person, He tells them to do something. First of all, He would ask them “do you believe I am able to do this?” When they revealed their belief and desire, He commanded them: “be healed,” “be opened,” “speak,” “walk,” “stretch out your hand,” and so forth.
With complete honesty, developing faith does not come easy at all. It does require failures, and tears for it to work in our favor. For it doesn’t come naturally to us anymore, we have to learn how to use it and refine it.
The only thing we should fight for in our life is our faith. We should not fight the devil, people, or even ourselves, but fight the GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH. Fight to have faith in every circumstance in life.When we lose our it, we lose the meaning of life. We lose all hopes, all fulfillment, and our pure joy.
The best way to understand how to use our faith is to study Jesus Christ. As you know, faith is a state of mind. The body and mind work together. The mind is the one who commands the body whatever it is thinking in its subconscious mind.
The body is always in alignment with the subconscious mind, therefore however our subconscious mind is conditioned, our body will react.
For that reason, it is in our best interest to gain control over our subconscious mind, because our subconscious mind determines the quality of our faith.
How can we gain control over our subconscious mind? There are three key points:
- Imagination
- Emotion
- Auto-suggestion
These three go together and cannot be separated, they are what accesses the subconscious mind and programs it. It works like this:
- With your imagination, you visualize what you desire out of life. You condition your conscious mind with that desire.
- By observing your desired outcome in life, you start to experience it in your emotional state. As if you are already in possession of it.
- By auto-suggestion, you are commanding your subconscious mind through your conscious mind in what direction it shall go. By repeating a thought in your conscious mind with emotions that would then program the subconscious.
Whenever Jesus was healing the sick or casting out evil spirits, He would always first teach about the good news of the Kingdom of God. For the Kingdom message teaches about a stable country abundant in riches, and where there is no sickness nor unrighteousness or lack.
That teaching triggered the imagination and the emotions of the people. When He had implanted the big picture into their minds, then He would go to a sick individual and give that person a suggestion. Such as, “be healed,” “take up your bed and walk,” and many such suggestions.
Because of their belief and the acceptance of that suggestion He gave, their subconscious mind received it and started to act and healed their body.
The 10 Effective Ways To Maximize Your Faith
1. Change Your Focus
In maximizing your faith, one effective way to do so is to be aware of what you are focusing on everyday. Your focus mirrors your faith and your life in general.
Where is your focus? On things, on pleasures, on negativity, on doubts? Examine your focus and accept the criticisms of people who notice your negative and destructive focus.
2. Eat The Word Of God (Don't Be A Fast Eater!)
For those of you who are slow eaters like me, you perhaps understand the enjoyment we get out of the food much more.
Being a slow eater, the flavor and the texture becomes more enjoyable for your tastebuds, because you take your time to enjoy it.
God is always warning us about haste when we are spending time with God or doing our bible study. God says for instance:
When we are reading God’s word, we should practice patience. We should take our time everyday to read with understanding, meditate and reflect on His word.
Because His word should become a part of our subconscious mind so that obedience doesn’t become a hassle, but natural for us.
3. Be Careful About What You Listen To
Another key to help you maximize your faith is to be alert to what you are feeding your mind. For if we want to increase our faith, we have to be in the right state of mind as much as we can. If we are in a negative state of mind (allowing our negative emotions to be in control), it’s often hard to keep up with our faith, we are often tempted to give up.
Therefore it is crucial to guard whatever our subconscious mind is being fed.It’s good to start our day by placing ourselves in a positive environment, and by nurturing our minds positively.That could mean, starting your day reading God’s word or listening to good podcasts or/and reading good books.
4. Understand Your Limits In Life
Understanding your limits in life is a key to maximizing your faith. We often forget this, for we often think we can do everything and when we can’t we feel like giving up.
This is especially true when you are pursuing your dream, that there are some things you cannot do although it is your vision and your idea.Sometimes we need others to help us bring that vision to pass, we cannot always do it alone.
This is also true when we are compassionate about somebody, desiring to help a person, but they refuse to accept. We often feel discouraged by thinking that we are not good enough or we’ve failed.
We have to understand that not everybody wants to accept our help. Not that our counsels are bad, but some people simply like to close their ears from the truth.
We cannot do everything and doing everything is not good for our health or our time management. We have to prioritize what’s important and what is within our limits. Whatever is beyond our limit, we have to place our trust in God for those things.
5. Strive To Become Like Jesus Christ
Becoming like our Lord Jesus Christ is the highest you can go when maximizing your faith. He is the perfect example of living in faith.
What I mean by becoming like Him, I mean to develop His way of thinking, His way of living (as in lifestyle), His attitude towards problems and life in general, love like Him, and have compassion like Him.
6. Study The Faith Of Kingdom Citizens Throughout History
We have a lot of examples throughout history of Kingdom citizens developing a strong faith. We can see them going through hell but still holding on to their faith.We should study those people and learn how they thrived in the middle of a crisis with their faith.
7. Fast Regularly
To fast regularly is incredibly powerful as a part of the Kingdom lifestyle. This is what made Jesus so successful and humble on earth, dealing with all sorts of problems we cannot imagine going through ourselves.
To fast increases our personal relationship with the Creator, for we disconnect ourselves from all the distractions that normally block our hearing from heeding God’s voice.
8. Where Are You Placing Your Faith?
It’s important to know where you are placing your faith, if it is not in God then you have a fixing to do. Oftentimes instead of placing our faith directly in God, we place it in His works or the promises of God.
We should not place our faith in His miracles, because they can be temporary. Instead, we should place our faith in God of the miracles.
9. Change Your Story
Our life is a reflection of what we tell ourselves. In addition, our faith is a reflection of what story we create in our mind, which also creates our perceptions of others and the world.
Faith isn’t always positive for you can have a faith in a negative. Believing yourself to be unworthy is some kind of faith.
It really does depend on the story you tell yourself everyday. Therefore in order then to maximize your faith is to rewrite your story.
Erase the negative self-talk that has been blocking you from your growth and exchange it for positive self-talk.Ask yourself, do you want to preach to others the way you have been preaching to yourself? Do you want them to imitate your behaviors and attitudes? How would you change your inner speech so others can benefit from it?If your inner preaching is not something you want others to observe, then don’t bother preaching it to yourself.
10. Walk In Your Faith
Again faith is not talk, talk, talk but do, do, do. Therefore whatever you claim to believe in, start to practice according to what you believe. If you don’t put into practice what you preach to yourself and to others, then you shouldn’t bother to preach it.
STOP TALKING AND START DOING!
Encouragement
We often experience life to be challenging and sometimes unfair for some people. People who are abused or people who are living in severe poverty and people who are losing everything. We can only imagine how hard that is for them to hold on to faith,
The thing about this life is that it is not easy no matter how much we want it to be. One thing guaranteed in life is you will get hit by it at some point, either sooner or later — we cannot run from the “punch.”
Because life is always changing and people along with it, either in the right direction or in the wrong. Life is seasonal, sometimes it’s summer and everything is like sunshine and rainbows.
And sometimes it’s like hell on earth. But sometimes it feels like living in a hell loop like it cannot be any better or it becomes even worse no matter how hard we think we try.
No, we cannot run from the “punch,” when you try to avoid being punched, it will hit you even harder. We cannot either punch back, because life is stronger than us. We cannot either stop it from happening, because life is ongoing.
One thing we can do is to understand the benefits we can get out of difficult times when we can persevere through those hard times we go through and come out stronger. Maybe life won’t get easier, but you become stronger when you hold on to faith no matter what.
When we “lose everything,” ( as in family and friends, etc) as we think, we haven’t actually lost everything. For to lose everything is losing our faith, because faith is everything.
As apostle Paul once said, “fight the good fight of faith.” Not life, but FAITH. Faith is the nourishment for our souls and its starvation comes from its lack of faith.
And understand that life promises trials of many kinds, and that life’s challenges come into our life to test if our faith is authentic or not. Its bruising is not always meant to harm us as much as we may think.
Sometimes ( and most of the time) its intention is to force us to be better, stronger, and wiser and to increase our pain tolerance whenever life hits us again.
What’s up, just wanted to tell you, I loved this article. It was helpful.
Keep on posting!
Thank you Twicsy, we are honoured that this post was helpful for you.