Strong Faith Never Comes Easily

by Curtis Shelburne

SOME THINGS just can’t be rushed. No matter how badly you want it, you’ll not be able to enjoy the shade from a 75-year-old oak tree unless someone 75 years ago took the trouble and had the foresight to plant it.

The same kind of thing is true, I believe, regarding faith. Lots of us want the blessings and the stability that can come during life’s storms only through a deep and abiding faith. I want those blessings, too, but I must understand that, though salvation is, thank God, a free gift bought by the blood of Christ, faith that is strong enough to stand the tests of time and adversity will not be cheaply had or quickly grown.

Faith that is in its own way as strong and comforting as a 75-year-old oak tree cannot spring forth full grown in the space of a heartbeat, no matter how badly we may want it or need it.

I guess what I’m saying is that if we want strong faith, we must ask God to help us do the things it takes to make it strong. Some of those things may seem mundane. Some of them may just seem like hard work.

Things like really making an effort to forgive someone who has deeply, unfairly hurt you. (Loving enemies is such a very nice concept—until you actually have one.)

Like using our dollars to help others and not just ourselves. (Nothing writes a clearer commentary on our real priorities in life than our check registers.)

Like taking the time and making the effort to be a genuine part of a church family of faith. (Not just a nominal “Christmas & Easter” member who could never be “convicted” of membership on the basis of such evidence as attendance or giving.)

 Like developing a relation ship with God in prayer and by reading his word.

Like devoting each day to him and doing whatever we do to his glory, not as someone who is “religious” but as a person who knows that his whole life is lived in the gracious presence of the divine Author of life and joy.

If we want genuine and strong faith, we can have it. Possessing that kind of faith will be a blessing of untold value.

But if we think that strong faith is a blessing we can get almost by accident and without effort, we are seriously self- deluded, and we’ve not learned the truth of Christ’s words, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:24).

I think what Christ is saying is that, contrary to our world’s “wisdom,” the way to true satisfaction, joy, and happiness both here and hereafter, the way to life that is full in every sense, is to want Him more than we want anything else.

That’s faith.