by Maria Hartman

People often wonder how to have faith. Some wonder as well what or who to have faith in. We complicate many issues in life by not investigating the correct source. The question of how to have faith is relatively simple, and God in His grace tells us exactly how to get it.

Romans 10: 17 Faith comes by hearing; hearing comes by the word of God.

Do you see how to have faith? If you do, you’ll notice that we have to follow the verse from the end back to the beginning. The Word of God is FIRST. Period. There is nothing else listed. SECOND, we need to HEAR: listening, understanding, meditating, examining, attending, focusing, learning, growing, etc. THIRD, after hearing the Word of God and allowing it in over and over again, we get the thing we must have in order to follow the path of our Savior.

No other ‘hearing’ of anything else will ever bring about faith in God. No great lecture or reasoning, and no knowledge shared alone apart from the inspired Word of God will ever bring about the faith that brings peace no matter the storm, and the faith that can move mountains.

Where there is faith, there is Jesus close by. When there is faith, the hardest roads are passable. Faith isn’t an isolated entity of its own; it is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). It has a foundation that goes deeper than the lowest part of the earth and stretches as high as the heavens.

Jesus is the beginning of faith; the Author. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. John 1:1. He is the middle of our faith; the day in, day out journey each must take. For we walk by faith and not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7. This is often the hardest part. And He is the Finisher of our faith. He takes what He began, what we lived by His grace, and wraps it all up in a package and then presents us to His Father; holy, righteous, and ready to inherit glory with Him for all eternity.

For Today: Faith isn’t always easy and it takes much commitment on our part. But how we develop faith in the living God is simple. It is a progression that begins at the beginning….with the Word. If filtered through our ears and our heart and heard: permitted inside and allowed to dwell in us richly…it can change us drastically. That’s what faith can do.