In my last post, I talked about 5 reasons you should be developing a strong faith. A strong faith gives you the ability to push through hard times, helps you move in a new direction, overcome fear, help others who are struggling, and enjoy an overall better quality of life. But how do you develop a strong faith? How does our faith grow? Here are 5 ways you can cultivate a stronger faith.
1. Read the Word.
The Bible is a book that is intended to produce faith in you. At the end of the gospel of John, we read, “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). When you read the scriptures, you are taking in truth about what God is like and what He has done. It is a testimony to His character and work in this world. Paul wrote in Romans 10:17, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” If you want to strengthen your faith, you must have a regular diet of reading the Bible. I highly recommend a reading plan that will allow you to read through the Bible in a year. The YouVersion app provides many options.
2. Put the Word into practice.
The Bible is full of instructions and commands for every area of our lives: relationships, money, sexuality, temptation, worry, anger and fear. Its testimony is simple–obey it and you will find life. Jesus put it this way, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock” (Matthew 7:24-25). When you put the words of the Bible into practice, you will see your life slowly start to change, and your faith will grow in the process. You will find that doing life God’s way simply works.
3. Surround yourself with people of faith.
One of my favorite sayings regarding relationships is, “Show me your friends, and I will show you your future.” Jim Rohn famously said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” It’s simply a fact of life that you and I will become like the people we surround ourselves with. King Solomon put it this way, “Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble” (Proverbs 13:20). This principle is either helping you or hurting you when it comes to your faith. Take a moment to think about the people you spend the most time with. Do they have a stronger faith than you? If not, your faith will not grow. You and I must get around people who believe in God and believe that He is at work in this world. Their faith will rub off on us.
4. Read great books.
Apart from the Bible, great books have been the primary source of building my faith. Authors like C.S. Lewis, Brennan Manning, Thomas à Kempis, Dallas Willard, John Eldredge, John Piper, and Ruth Haley Barton have been indispensable for my faith. These authors have explained the scriptures and the spiritual life in a way that makes sense to me. Through them I have learned about God, my soul, how to care for my soul, how to pray, how to be alone with God, how to love God, how to trust God, and how to find peace and joy. Paul told Timothy, “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments” (2 Timothy 4:13). This shows that in addition to the scriptures, Paul also valued the writings of other mentors in the faith.
5. Trust God in the pain.
I believe that God uses difficulties and pain to stretch and grow our faith. He allows us to go through the fire so that we can learn to trust him. In 2 Corinthians 1:9, Paul explains this idea, “Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). Paul doesn’t say what the difficulty was, but just that they had lost all hope of survival. Then he adds that God allowed this to happen to bring them to the end of trusting in themselves. Dallas Willard commented once that, “God’s address is the end of your rope.” The truth is that God never wastes pain. It is there to grow us, stretch us, and teach us that God can be trusted.
Questions to ponder/bother you:
- How often do you read God’s Word?
- Do you deliberately try to follow what God’s Word says?
- Do your closest friends have a strong faith?
- What books do you need to start reading to grow your faith?
- What pain are you going through right now that you need to trust God with?
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