Over the past year, I have begun to recognize both in my own life and in the lives of others an interesting phenomenon. It has to do with faith, a subject that I am keenly interested in since I find myself growing in it. Not only is it of great importance to me, but also to the Church during these days of testing.

I don’t believe that one who has grown up in this fallen world arrives at just having faith in Jesus Christ. While it takes faith in Jesus to yield your life to Him, one can’t say that we have attained the total amount of faith needed. In fact, the faith it takes to make this all or nothing decision to give your will to God is just the beginning of the “faith growing journey.”

Ask anyone who has been walking in relationship with Jesus, through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and they will tell you that their lives have been a series of tests from God to see if we will choose to trust Him. As each test gets increasingly harder, they grow more in faith. The Christian journey is a journey into greater faith.

What is authentic faith?

The author of Hebrews in the Bible defines it as:

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

Many people who are attending bible studies often think they are growing in faith, but that is not true; they are growing in knowledge. Authentic faith takes the knowledge that is professed to be true and applies it to life. Faith lives as if God’s provision is already there, even though they can’t see it.

There are only two ways to grow in authentic faith. First, is for God to put you into a situation where only He can provide what you need. One story is when Jesus and the apostles were sailing across the Sea of Galilee and a huge storm came and threatened to sink the ship. Jesus was asleep and the Apostles cried out to them to save them. Jesus awoke and calmed the storm and the seas. He put them in the boat with Him and allowed the storm to come upon them so He could show them His Authority.

Second, is when you put yourself in a situation where only God can supply what you need. Take Peter’s story when He walks on water. He requested that Jesus command him to come to Him on the water. The moment he slid off the gunnel of the boat and onto the water, Jesus had to either sustain him or let him go for a swim.

You will never know whether God can sustain you until

only by His action can you be sustained.

Our Battle For Attaining Real Faith

The struggle for growing in authentic faith results in two key areas that we often don’t pay much attention to. These are areas that I have been intensely wrestling with for the past couple of years. The first key area is Natural Law. We have always lived with natural law. When God created the world and placed living creatures on it, we all lived according to the laws established by Him.

For example, according to natural law, when a person dies, they don’t come back. Not in human form at least. Water does not have the buoyancy to keep a man on top of the water. Thus, when someone jumps off of a boat, they go swimming. Yet Jesus died and rose from the Dead. He also came out to the Apostles walking on the water. This is impossible!!!! Yet not for God, who created natural law. God is a being who is able to act supernaturally. Thus, He can make a blind man see, cleanse a leper, heal the sick, multiply the loaves and all the rest.

We give St. Thomas a bad rap for his choice to not believe the other Apostles when they saw him risen. Thomas wanted empirical evidence, according to natural law, before he would believe. Jesus confronts Thomas and shows him the empirical evidence and then commands Thomas to stop unbelieving in His word.

What we must learn is that we have a free will to choose to believe or not. The question is will we take Jesus at his word or will we disobey his command to believe by waiting for empirical evidence?

The second key for growing in authentic faith is to choose to not live according to how we feel, but according to the Truth of God. If we were to honestly do an examination of our day and determine upon what we choose to live by, most of us would see that we make decisions and then act not upon the Word of God, but upon how we feel in any given moment. And if we examined which emotions we pay the most attention to, we would find Fear at the top.

Why? There are plenty of reasons, but I will give you a few that I have discovered. 

Fear is the number one weapon demons use to prevent us from doing the will of God. For example, God commands us in the Great Commission to go out and evangelize and make disciples. Yet disciples disobey His command because they are afraid to talk to strangers.

Remember that fear is not just a feeling, but a temptation! The enemy wants to tempt us to not obey God by doubting in His goodness, His desire for our best, and His power to do it. We “feel” justified to disobey God because we are not sure (have knowledge of the outcome) that God will do it.

Therefore, under the “wisdom” of the world, we can’t trust God until He shows us the outcome or provision. That, by the way, is not living by faith but by knowledge. We have knowledge of the provision. In other words, we want to see the safety net before we will jump into God’s divine providence.

The other really good reason is that according to St. Ignatius (in his Spiritual Exercises), Demons are able to insert false thoughts into our minds as well as false emotions. This is a critical piece to understand. Sometimes the thoughts and feelings are not ours, but the enemies. We become like cattle who simply move away from the direction of perceived pain. We fear we will get hurt so we won’t follow or do that command.

Don’t take my word for this, do your own examination. Ask the Holy Spirit to begin to reveal to you your decision-making process and how your emotions are intertwined in it. He will show you just how often fear is involved and how quickly we take our eyes of the Lord and His word and put them on the emotion.

Please understand that I am not saying that all emotions are bad and not trustworthy. Not at all. Being fearful of walking along the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff is a good fear. What I am saying is that our fears often take precedence over living according to the word of God. We were made to live in the supernatural, but will refuse to go there because we won’t trust God enough to leave the natural.

Meet you in the silence of prayer. drp