Do We Need More Faith?

You may hear Christians make this statement just about any day of the week. “I need more faith.” “You need more faith.” “If you had more faith, you could be healed.” “If you had more faith, God would do miracles.” "If we had more faith, we would have this or that…”

The assumption that we don’t have enough faith is almost universal in the modern church world. We shouldn’t be surprised by that. Even Jesus’ closest followers thought this way. “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘increase our faith’” (Luke 17:5)

The idea is that faith comes in incremental degrees. If that’s our viewpoint, we’ll naturally believe that we need more. But it’s not true. Faith is not given to you by degrees. Faith is given to you in the person of Jesus Christ. In fact, the Bible teaches that Christ IS our faith.

Many people have associated faith with that warm, tingly feeling they get at times when they feel spiritually moved. Others think of it as the degree of confidence (or lack of fear) they feel. But faith is not a feeling. A person expressing faith could feel confident or spiritually moved, but it’s important to recognize that faith isn’t grounded in feelings.

Faith is a actual reality, and it has a concrete source. But you can have faith in an unworthy or unreliable object. A mountain-sized faith in an unworthy object will do you no good. And it isn’t HOW MUCH faith you have. Think of it this way: IN WHOM have you put that faith?

Also, the object of our faith is not the only thing that is important. We also have to realize the equal importance of the source of our faith. Faith isn’t something that we work up by thinking positive thoughts and speaking positive words. Faith is personified in Jesus Christ. He doesn’t just give us faith, but He IS our faith! We live by HIS faith and thus by divine faith.

Paul wrote, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Grace is the cause for our salvation, and faith is the conduit through which we experience it, but the bible says that when it comes to faith, THAT doesn’t come from us. It’s a gift of God. He gives us the faith we possess as a gift.

Faith isn’t something we achieve by getting our minds right. It’s something we receive through Jesus, and we then live by His faith, not one that we have to try to produce.

My favorite verse in the Bible is Galatians 2:20 which, in one verse, gives the whole gospel of Christ. But one section of it is often mistranslated and misquoted. The King James version gives an accurate translation from the original Greek. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh, I LIVE BY THE FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD who loved me and gave his life for me.”

Many modern translations change it to read “by faith IN the Son of God”. While it’s certainly not wrong to say that we live by faith IN Jesus Christ, think about how the King James states it. Notice the distinction here. While it’s true that we live by faith IN the Son of God, the complete picture is even better than that. We live by the faith OF the Son of God!

The idea that we need to have more faith is not right, and it will cause you to constantly evaluate yourself, wondering if you have enough of it. Every time you give yourself such a legalistic test, you’ll conclude that you come up short. That’s always the result of a legalistic approach.

The truth is that you HAVE enough faint because you have Jesus Christ. At your conversion and new birth, you received ALL of the faith OF Christ and, as He lives in you, and will always live in you, it is HIS FAITH alone that matters. Don’t focus on YOUR faith. Focus on Him and depend on HIS faith to sustain you. His strength is perfected in our weakness. You don’t need more faith. We all simply need to more fully know all we possess in Jesus Christ. So when you FEEL like your faith is weak, defer to Him because HIS faith will never let you down.