Finite amounts of faith.

Christians regularly talk about putting our faith in God. But we don’t always get the definition of “faith” correct. Sometimes we think of faith as a substance—same as we sometimes think of grace. We think of it as a supernatural object God has to grant us. Because Jesus’s apostles asked him about increasing their faith, Lk 17.5 they got the idea it’s a spiritual material we have in us… and there’s only a certain amount we can hold. Like the battery in your phone; like the gasoline tank in your car. Sometimes the “faith tank” is full; sometimes it’s low.

But precisely like grace, faith is not an object. It’s an attitude. It’s our trust in God. And either we have it or we don’t.

The supposed amount of faith we have, isn’t really an amount. It’s whether we have faith in God in a given situation. I’ve known Christians who absolutely believe God can cure illnesses; they’ve seen it happen! But when it comes to whether God will cure them personally, they’re not so sure.

I know how they feel. I knew, hypothetically, God can cure the sick, ’cause Jesus does it all over the gospels. Didn’t really trust him to cure me… until one day, when I was seriously nauseous and finally, finally prayed, “God, could you please just take this away?” and he immediately did. I was fine. Hadn’t happened before; haven’t been in a situation where it happened again; but at the time I think God wanted me to experience for myself how he can do that, so he did that.

It didn’t increase my faith level; it meant I didn’t really have faith before, but I definitely have it now. My attitude changed. Because again, faith is an attitude.

There’s no “faith tank.”

To use another example: When I get into the passenger seat of a car, either I trust the driver, or I kinda trust the driver, or I don’t and won’t get in. There’s no “tank” in me which determines how much I trust the driver. If that person’s unreliable, there’s not one day where my “faith tank” is full so I hop in, regardless of how drunk that person is. Obviously I’m not going off the contents of my “faith tank”; I’m using commonsense.

And if I didn’t have any commonsense, I’d hop in. I’d be stupid. Which is an awful lot like someone who doesn’t trust God, and claims it’s because their “faith tank” is low. They sound just as ridiculous.

Either my commonsense tells me I can trust God in this particular thing, or my commonsense tells me I can’t. (And it’d be wrong. But then again I’m wrong.) Or I trust him partway. But the “level” I trust God has nothing to do with any cache of faith I’ve accumulated. It’s based—like all trust is based—on past experience. If I’ve had God-experiences where he came through for me, I trust him; I have faith. If I have no such experience, I’m gonna doubt. Whether I can overcome these doubts and trust God anyway, depends in part on bible, past experience, other Christians’ testimonies, or commonsense.

This is why we trust God fully in one circumstance… and not so fully in another. Fr’instance I trust God to hear my prayers. I know from experience he does, ’cause he answers. Doesn’t always give me the answer I like; sometimes he tells me no or not yet. But that is an answer. And he’s told me yes enough times so I know prayer isn’t a waste of time. So I don’t doubt God hears.

Same with faith healing. In my experience, when I pray someone (or me) might be cured, God’s answers are—same as my other prayer requests—sometimes no. But sometimes they’ve been yes, followed by a miracle. God doesn’t say yes 100 percent of the time, so I don’t expect him to cure people 100 percent of the time. One could say (and in the past I’ve said) my “faith level” is therefore not 100 percent—but it is a percentage, based on the percentage of people whom God’s cured for me. And that’s rubbish. Jesus himself didn’t have a 100 percent success rate, Mk 6.5 so are you gonna tell me he didn’t have a 100 percent “faith level”? Jesus, of all people?

Nope; I still have faith God can cure people. Total faith God can cure people. ’Cause I’ve seen him do it. I know he can. I also know he might not, but that’s not a faith thing; that’s a commonsense recognition that God does as he wants, and knows best, and I trust he knows best, and that’s faith too. God cures whomever he wants, and I’m just glad he does—and sometimes uses me to help others; that’s awesome too.

We’re all like that when it comes to God. We trust him absolutely in somethings, less in others, and not at all in still others. We gotta work at trusting him more, in everything. But this doesn’t mean we gotta redistribute our “faith tank” resources—like we distribute strength and health and dexterity points in a video game character. That means we gotta seek other God-experiences which’ll switch us from no faith to faith. We gotta see God do certain things so we experientially know he’ll do that sort of thing.

And we don’t yet know, we gotta tap that particular fruit of the Spirit which grants us the faith to strive to know. That, I believe, is the “faith the size of a mustard seed” Jesus spoke of: You may not know for certain it can get a tree to walk—but the Holy Spirit is nudging you to pray for such a thing, and you trust him, so you’ll give it a shot. And it’ll happen.

Luke 17.6 NKJV

So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

That’s the faith we gotta develop as we grow in spiritual maturity. Keep looking for opportunities to grow it.