Your faith is waiting for you

Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This is my favorite scripture! If you don’t have hope, you can’t exercise your faith. The Word also says that each of us is give a measure of faith. That means, we all have faith whether we choose to exercise it or not. I think about faith as if it were a muscle. Like the muscles in our body, we have them at birth. When a baby is born they have very weak muscles. They have them, but their muscles will not allow them to do very much at all. Someone else has to do pretty much everything for them. Once that baby is is allowed to move about, their muscles will start to become stronger. They will soon be able to do more things on their own. Once they realize the things they can do, they actually want to do more. They become more curious, and their muscles develop even more. I see us as being like that baby when we first accept Christ. Our faith may be weak like that baby’s muscles, not very developed. We may not be able to pray or fast, believing. We may need someone else to pray for us or with us. But God wants us to develop our faith muscles. The more we use that faith muscle the stronger it becomes. And if we every stop using it it will develop atrophy, just like our biological muscles. Our faith can become weak again, even as a mature Christian if we don’t exercise it. How do I exercise my faith, Addie? By believing God for things you have not seen before. You may not have seen that particular thing before, but you have witnessed how God works for you in the past or how he has worked for others. We can even use Biblical figures as a demonstration of how God moved for Abraham when he told him to go to a land he’d never been before and gave him a promise to bless and multiply is seed if he obeyed. There are so many examples Noah built the ark on faith or Moses went back to Egypt on faith. Hebrews 11 runs down an extensive list of those who did not know for certain how things would turn out, but they knew their God was able to do just what he promised. So, for us our faith is there. It can increase; or it can decrease, just like that muscle. But without you activating your faith with hope, it will not develop. So, in the end, every man does have faith; but your faith…your strong, developed faith is waiting on you.