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Many people seem to think that once they come to the place where they have great faith, they can do anything, and nothing will be impossible to them. So they try to gather more and more faith, by repeating Bible verses, memorising them, and making declarations of what they believe is going to happen to them. Because they believe certain things in their mind they imagine they will happen.

The question is, what or who is going to make things happen. Their faith is going to make things happen, or they are going to make things happen through their faith? If these things are true, where is God in this picture? Do you really think that you are going to have faith and then your faith will accomplish great things? What do you need God for? Or have you become like God, able to do whatever you want and believe?

This is a totally wrong approach towards faith. To begin with, we are not saved by our faith, but by God by His unmerited favour towards us (Ep.2:8,9). We receive this free gift of salvation through our faith. But our faith is not what saves us, but God by His grace. Certainly, if we don't have faith, we can't receive what God is offering us. Again, we can't save ourselves even if we have a lot of faith!

This whole understanding of faith is wrong if it is used like these people are doing. If we think through this, we can understand that what they imply through this word 'faith' is something they achieve or reach up to by making sufficient effort to believe. They think that once they have come to a place where they have become sufficiently convinced about something, that is faith.

No. Our faith is our trust in God and dependence on Him. We come to trust God when we get to know about who He is, about His character, and His thoughts and plans for us. We trust in God, we accept His word, and then we are willing to place our whole life in His hands and do whatever He tells us (He.11:6). God is the One who saves us, and only He has the ability to do that or do any miracle for us. We can receive all these things from Him when we trust Him. For example, when we understand and believe that Jesus has taken the punishment for our sins, we can then go and ask Him for forgiveness and receive it. It is totally out of place to imagine that we somehow build up our faith and then we can experience salvation or miracles.

When we know God as who He is, and ourselves as creatures, we will depend on Him entirely even for our existence. He is the only One who has power, neither our faith nor our words (Ps.62:11). By our faith we can ask Him for whatever we need, and know that it is He on whom we are dependent.

This deviant understanding of faith is a part of the worldwide infiltration of the concept that tries to make us independent of God wanting to do whatever we want. This was the original temptation that came to Eve when Satan told her that she could get to know good and evil herself and become like God (Ge.3:5). It led to sin.

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