Faith is very important to God. You may feel the need to increase faith in God, but you may also wonder why is faith so important to Him. See the article why faith is so important. Read on to learn how to increase your faith.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
We exercise faith in a lot of things
What does it mean to have faith?
Everyone exercises faith in many things everyday. When you ride a bike, you have faith that you won’t fall over. When you sit on a chair, you have faith that the chair won’t collapse. When you tell your friend a secret, you have faith that he won’t reveal it to other people. You have faith that the sun will come up in the morning and the moon will be in the night skies.
As you can see, everyone exercises faith. Having faith is not a mystery. It is a belief that you can rely on something or someone. Everyone practices faith daily. Everyone has some faith in family, friends, institutions, professionals, government, science, themselves, etc.
But not everyone has faith in God. Perhaps even for some Christians, our faith in a chair is greater than our faith in God, because we 100% trust the chair would not fail us but we may doubt God.
What if we have no faith in God?
Let’s go to a very basic level. What if you start with absolutely no faith in God? Don’t be discouraged. Everyone must start somewhere and it doesn’t matter where you start from. The key is to do the right thing. What is the right thing to do when you have no faith in God?
“You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)
The right thing to do is to seek Him sincerely and earnestly. You can pray this prayer with sincerity:
“God, I don’t have much faith, but help me experience You and build up that faith. Reveal Yourself to me and help me understand Your heart. Show me Your love for me and help me love You. Hear my cries for help and help me.”
In Jesus’s name, Amen.
“If we are faithless, He remains faithful— for He cannot deny Himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13)
So please take comfort in this. It doesn’t matter where you are coming from, He is always faithful and will help you from where you are.
What else can you do to seek Him with all your heart?
Increase faith in God: Obey His commandments
Jesus said, “The one who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will reveal Myself to him.” (John 14:21)
Another right thing to do is to obey God in your situation. For example, if you are praying about something and you don’t have much faith, you can still do two things to obey Him.
- With all your heart and not giving up, keep praying.
- Wait for His answer and don’t take the matter into your own hands. Wait for Him to give you direction or the next steps, or until the prayer is answered.
Here’s a man who didn’t have much faith, but did the right thing:
“And someone from the crowd answered him, ‘Teacher, I brought my son to You, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.’
And He answered them, ‘O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to Me.’
And they brought the boy to Him. And when the spirit saw Him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.
And Jesus asked his father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.’
And Jesus said to him, ‘”If You can”! All things are possible for the one who believes.’
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.'” (Mark 9:17-25)
What did this man do? He had the right attitude by coming to Jesus in sincerity. He sought Him with all his heart. He came to the disciples first but they could not help him. Without giving up, he humbly asked again. Then what did God do for him? He answered his prayer!
To sum up: Even if you don’t have much faith, seek God and obey Him anyway.
How to get more faith
Faith in God is very similar to having faith in a person. It is difficult to trust someone overnight. First, a relationship needs to be built. Think of a friend or a loved one whom you trust. How did you come to trust that person? Was it by spending time with him and knowing his likes and dislikes? Was it by interactions with him and his reputation as a trustworthy person? Was it because he was found reliable when you faced difficulties?
Perhaps some or all of the above is true. And all those things took some time and didn’t happen overnight. So it is the same with building faith in God.
1. More faith: By relationship
We need to build our relationship with God. Just as we have relationships with people, God wants us to know Him in a personal way. He is always calling us to be closer to Him. Like any relationship in your life, you need to spend time with God and talk to Him daily. (See details on how to spend time with Him through prayer.)
It is through our relationship with God that we know Him more. By knowing Him more, we build our trust in Him. You can’t really trust someone you don’t spend time with. So if you are not doing so already, start spending time with God daily.
“Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18)
2. More faith: By past experiences
Next, remember His faithfulness from the past. If you have experienced how God has answered your prayers in the past and how He has taken care of you, write these things down and meditate on them. Use them as stepping stones for faith in Him in the future.
“I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of Your wonderful deeds.” (Psalm 9:1)
3. More faith: By practicing a little everyday
Did you know there are opportunities to grow your faith each day? No problem is too small or big for God.
Ask Him to help you with your homework, ask Him to help you pass a test, ask Him to help you in your job, ask Him to help you in your relationships, ask Him to help other people. Ask Him to help you respond to someone you have a conflict with. Ask Him to help you with the tiny, tiny things and ask Him to help you with the big, giant things.
Ask Him everyday. See every challenge as an opportunity to ask for His help. See every negative emotion as an opportunity for Him to step in and give you peace. The more you ask, the more you will receive.
Ask without giving up. If at first, you see nothing, keep persevering. We have spiritual enemies that want to hinder our growth (Ephesians 6:12). But God is greater than them. So keep asking and seeking God in everything you do. As you ask God about the small things, you will build faith for greater things.
“Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)
4. More faith: By asking Him for more
You can get more faith by asking Him for it!
“And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” (1 John 5:14)
It’s certainly the will of God that we increase our faith. Why not ask God everyday to increase your faith? He will do it!
5. Practice faith: Something ridiculous
“The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ And the Lord said, ‘If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and be planted in the sea”; and it would obey you.'” (Luke 17: 5-6)
Jesus challenged His disciples to do something ridiculous: have faith in God to uproot a tree and plant it in the ocean. Was the tree bothering anyone so that it needed to go into the sea?
But Jesus was making a different point. He wanted His disciples to see that they can ask anything in His name and it will be done for them. He challenged them to practice faith even though what He wanted them to do seemed ludicrous.
That’s what He also wants for us today: believe in God and practice faith even if it seems impossible or silly. Will you start practicing faith today? The heavenly Father is so good that if you believe, He will do it.
How to have great faith
Trusting Him is dependent on God’s character and reliability. So we don’t have to muster up any feelings or be in a certain state. Actually, we don’t need to keep looking to ourselves to see how much faith we have.
It is not about us. It is all about God. Faith in God is trusting the Person of God and not trusting in how much faith we have. It is all about God and His dependability, because even “if we are faithless, He remains faithful” (2 Timothy 2:13).
The key is the more we lean on Him for everything, the more we see His faithfulness. So let go of control. “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
All of this will guarantee your faith will grow. Practice these things and watch what He does!
Q&A. Why does the Bible say the one who doubts is like the waves of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind?
James 1:6-8 says, “But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways”.
James’ letter in the Bible is addressed to believers. If you are a Christian, you should obey God. Did you know that the Bible also says, “whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23)? Faith is very important to God and “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
When we first believed, of course we lacked many things, including the kind of faith God wants to see in us. But we must not stay at the same level of faith as when we first believed. We should obey God by learning to have more faith.
So God teaches us from these verses how to have faith. He implies that faith is a choice. It is a choice because God tells us to not doubt. If He tells us this, then we know that we can choose to believe in Him and choose to not believe in contradictory faithless thoughts that are not from Him.
The one who doubts is double-minded. This person thinks on both sides at once, being believing and then unbelieving. We can choose to not be like that. We can choose to not believe in doubting thoughts and believe in the words of God. So don’t take cues from your circumstances to influence your belief. If you do that, then it is as if you are “driven and tossed by the wind”, being tossed about by the influence of your circumstances. Instead, be determined to set your mind to believe God’s words and rely on the Holy Spirit to help you.
The Bible says, “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30-31). How to love God like this in terms of faith? Believe with all your heart, practice with all your strength, rely on the Holy Spirit, and set your mind to it!
Read Hebrews 11 in the Bible.
See why faith is so important to Him.