One day, a little girl aged five, came to her father and asked him for a dollhouse. He day nodded and promised to build her one, then he went back to reading his book.
After some time passed, he looked away from his book, out the window of his den and saw his daughters’ arms filled with dishes, toys and dolls, making may trips until there was a big pile of playthings in the yard. He asked his wife what she was doing.
His wife responded, “You promised to build her a dollhouse and she believes you. She is just getting ready for it.”
The dad, feeling like he was just hit with a bomb, put down his book and headed out to the lumber yard immediately for supplies to build his little girl a dollhouse.
Did he have to respond this way? Did he have to do this? No. Did she deserve this? No. But he gave his word, and she believed it and acted upon it. When he saw her faith in him, nothing could keep him carrying out his word.
Your Christian faith provides the basis for how you live day by day. As a Christian, you are a follower of Jesus and you apply the Bible’s teachings, especially the teachings of Jesus, to every aspect of your life. The Bible teaches things like honesty and integrity, treating others with love, dignity and respect, being generous, helping the poor, sharing your faith, and many other things. All these affect your day-to-day living. As you grow in your faith you will notice changes in your life that will affect how you live.
But everyday life is not just that easy, right? Or can it be?
Biblical definitions of faith:
- Believing there will be a fulfillment of those things that are told us by the Lord – Luke 1:45
- Believing that it will be just as was told us – Acts 27:25
- Not wavering at the promise of God, but being fully convinced that what He has promised He is able to perform – Romans 4:20-21
Faith can be thought of like a muscle. We all have muscle, but each person to different degrees. With some people you can just see the muscles from far away, others only when you get closer, and still others might have their muscles hidden away and you cannot see any muscle.
I use this analogy because both my faith and my muscles were hidden at a time. Just over a year ago I began an exercise program. I was very obese. When I started out, the amount of weight I was lifting were small amounts. It was very humbling to realize just far out of shape I had let myself go.
I was going to the gym regularly. Slowly I was able to lift higher amounts of weights, I was able to do cardo faster than a walk pace. This has been a journey. I been learning about the body parts and how certain muscles work and best exercises for them. This information came from different people. Not everyone trains the same way so what works for one person for improvement my not be the same for another. We all a have different DNA makeup.
My improvement in my workouts and the design of my routine did not have over night. I listened to others, I watched other people from a distance to learn proper form and I worked at it. Faith is the same way.
When I because a Christian I had little faith but I believed that Jesus could deliver me from my abuses. Over time my faith grew. But for my faith to grow I had to “exercise” it. My faith grew as I humbled myself. Just as I was humbled at the gym, as I saw that it was going to be a process for health improvement, so too I had to humble myself for my faith to grow.
The more I let go to different stuff in my life, it is a humbling process and that process, when keeping in the Scriptures increases faith. Our Lord has this all under control. Try as I might, I do no really have the control as I like to think I do.
In order to build muscle, you have to tear the muscle. To build faith, there is a tearing process of old thoughts that needs to go and replaced. In the gym it is a community of sorts with different people who has similar goals and people will help.
Our Christian community is not so obvious when we are outside of the church building. As Christians we go to work, we can feel isolated in this world. We might interact with another human species without any real exchange of meaningful words. It can be lonely.
In building your faith and living it out, start small. When at the checkout and you are about to leave look the person in the eye and just say “God bless to you” or “blessing to you”, or something like that. You will be surprised to the reactions.
Most of the time I see the other person face light up, big smile and receive back a “Thank you” or “same to you too”. I will admit that I have received some blank looks back, and once I rude response back.
But doing this has two benefits, 1) you are exercising your faith that you are going to be giving words of encouragement to another follower for Christ Jesus, and 2) that other person may feel less isolated in this world.
Let the Holy Spirit guide you and humble yourself. And watch your faith grow.