The power of faith
“To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.” Hebrews 11:1 (GNT).
Faith in God is a power that can save our life. It’s not a feeling. No, it is believing in the power of God to save us totally from sin. We pray to God to get faith, and then fight to hold onto it for our whole life. But when we’ve got faith, we experience the amazing power it has to change our life completely. But how? How can living a life of faith in God help us?
1. We don’t need to worry about the future anymore.
“Do not worry about anything,” Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6 (NCV).
“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you,” writes Peter in 1 Peter 5:7 (NLT).
If we trust only in what we understand, we worry about the many trials and difficulties that come over our lives. After all, we don’t know the reason why we have these difficult situations. We don’t know what the outcome or result will be, or how they will affect us over a long period. And as for the future? Throughout our lives, we could come into situations that we did not expect and then worry about them a lot.
But if we choose to have faith, to trust in God – the Master Builder who guides everything in heaven and on earth – then we are freed from worrying about our life. God has a perfect plan for us in everything He sends our way. He sends us trials or difficulties and He tests us, so that we can overcome sin, and the fruits of the Spirit can grow in us. He knows how it will end. He has planned our whole life, with love and care. When we truly believe that, we don’t have a single reason to be worried. We can throw all our care on Him and stay busy with doing His will instead of worrying about everything past, present, and future.
2. We become confident, strong, and brave.
When we try to do the good, we very quickly realise that we are very weak and often fail to do the good. We find that we often don’t have enough patience when we are with our children; we sometimes say hurtful things to those that we love. If we carry on, depending on our own strength and not on God, we will quickly be discouraged by our own weaknesses when we are faced with these failures.
But if we have faith in God and the power of His Word, we know that we don’t have to carry on in our own strength. 2 Chronicles 16:9 (BBE) says, “For the eyes of the Lord go this way and that, through all the earth, letting it be seen that he is the strong support of those whose hearts are true to him.”
We also read this amazing promise in Romans 16:20 (NCV): “The God who brings peace will soon defeat Satan and give you power over him.”
If we believe these verses, and the whole Bible, we will trust God in our trials. We will be very sure that God will defeat Satan and give us power over him. The result is certain! God will show His great power by fighting for us, and we will overcome sin. Faith in this will make us strong and brave in our fight against the sin that lives in our human nature.
3. We have joy.
“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” Philippians 1:6 (NLT).
God has started a work in us. And what work is that? The work of freeing us from the sin in our nature and changing us to become like Jesus. This brings a lot of joy to each one who really wants to become free from sin. God has not only begun a work, He has assured us that He will finish it. God is not like many people who don’t finish what they have started. He doesn’t begin something and then drop it or lose interest before He can finish it.
How then could we become discouraged on life’s way? If we have faith in God’s Word – in His promises to change us, in His power to help us overcome sin – then we will be filled with joy.
4. Nothing can move us.
“Those who trust the LORD are like Mount Zion, which can never be shaken. It remains firm forever.” Psalm 125:1 (CSB).
In many places in the Bible, God’s Word is compared to a rock. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us that whoever hears His words and does them, will be like a man who built his house on a rock. And when the storms come and beat against that house, it will remain standing, because of the strong foundation of faith on which it is built. (Matthew 7:24-27.)
But those who live by their feelings and put their trust in things of this earth, are like a man who builds his house on sand. What a bad foundation that is! The first storm would take that house down.
If we believe in God and choose to live by faith, and not by our feelings which change all the time, we are not moved by the storms of life. Nothing can make us discouraged. Nothing can steal our faith, because we believe in the almighty God.
5. We experience miracles.
The Old Testament is filled with stories of people who experienced miracles through the power of faith. They are even known as “heroes of faith” today. Think about David. Though he was a young boy, he believed without a doubt that God would help him overcome the giant Goliath. He didn’t stop to think about it, to work out how much bigger than him the giant was, how many more years he had been fighting as a soldier, etc. He chose to believe in God, and he went ahead in faith. And because of his faith, he saved the Israelite army from the Philistines!
There are many other examples of miracles God did through and for the heroes of faith. But the greatest miracle of all is the miracle that God did in Jesus, and that He will do in each of us who believe. He will help us to fight against sin in our own human nature and defeat it, up to a point where we are no longer even tempted to sin, but are full of the fruits of the Spirit instead. He will change us so that it becomes our nature to be patient in situations where we would have been impatient before, to be thankful instead of complaining, etc. Now that is a miracle! And if we believe in God, that miracle will take place right inside of us.
“All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.” Hebrews 11:39-40 (NLT).
“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” 2 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV).