Where does faith then come from? We have seen that faith does not come from oneself and thus any notion of a person simply “believing more” is ridicules. Faith finds its origin and completion fully and only from Christ. “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…” (Heb 12:2) God had blessed mankind with varying degrees of faith, which when we realize that faith is not our own it leads us to soberness in our position before God. “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” (Rom 12:3) God himself has dealt to each man a measure of faith, some more than others but it is not their own, thankfully we know that only faith the size of a mustard seed is all that is needed for our petitions to be effectual. (Matt 17:20)

I know that is have prayed during my life “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:25) While faith itself is a gift of God, we can have a desire for faith or not.  We can rebelliously not ever want to see or we can cry to God to show us himself. I know I have asked many times for God to give me faith, but as we look at Ephesians 2:8 we see something interesting “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:” Now I know that people say that you are saved by faith, and while that is partially true, we are rather saved by grace. Faith is the conduit in which God enacts his grace upon us. Instead of the desire for more faith it is in actuality more of the grace of God that is needed. For God to give anyone faith is a sign of his wonderful, unmerited grace toward us.

So where does knowledge come in? Reason and faith are not conflicting ventures. For any student of epistemology knows that without basic assumptions that nothing in the universe makes any sense. Once the foundational elements are in place, things such as that we are real and that we can know anything, then everything after that makes sense and follows an observable pattern. Faith as well is necessary in order for us to know anything about God, it is the foundation, and then through that we can use reason to learn more about him. St. Anselm said it best, “Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand.” Understanding does come, however it cannot precede faith. This is not washy post-modern opinions, nor is it modernist fact proving, it is the inward confirmation of our beliefs without knowledge, that leads us to knowledge. St. Anselm continued this thought by saying “I hold it to be a failure in duty if after we have become steadfast in our faith we do not strive to understand what we believe.” Faith is the beginning and we must be responsible in the discovering of God’s truth.

Faith gives us our connection to God, and we also know that whatever is not of faith is then sin (Rom 14:23), which disconnects us from him. The Reformers went by the five Solas, which acted as the foundational cry of the reformation; among them was Sola Fide, or “by faith alone”. This does not mean that we only need faith, for that is a low view of it, it means that nothing is better or more effectual than faith. Not only are other ventures not needed they are not able to do what faith can, for without faith it is absolutely impossible to please God. Let us then thank God for bestowing upon us faith that we may trust in him, for without his working we would not be able to see him. Coming to God in faith alone strips us of any working we could do ourselves, for even our faith is not our own, and brings us safely into a relationship with God.

The problem with my friend’s admonition was that if I truly didn’t believe something, but I tried to make myself believe it, then it was nothing more than self deception. This sort of “I don’t know if this is true but I am supposed to” mentality is a very scary idea, because if we claim that others simply make up what they believe, how do we know that we are in the right? Muslims say that they have faith; if they never questioned but simply lived up to the above challenge then they would never be anything but a Muslim. In other words, when conflicting views are all based simply on “you just need to believe” then how can you possibly determine what is true? No, I desired the true God too much to simply take that shortcut.

Hebrews 11:1 gives us a plain definition of faith “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Substances, evidence, these terms are not simply flowery feelings and wishful thinking, scripture itself points to faith as being something concrete. Faith is the substance or essence of what we hope for and it is the evidence or proof of things that we do not see. Faith is the inward confirmation of things that we do not know. The evidence for something does not come from within but from outside of a person, thus faith comes, not from ourselves, but as evidence that comes to us from without.

I know in my doubting I often wondered why God wouldn’t just make it easy for us to see a 1+1 type of proof that he existed, why would he make it so hard for us to find him through empirical means. The answer is that we were never meant to. Scripture says that “…without faith it is impossible to please him…” (Heb 11:6) God has always intended man to come to him in faith and not by any self sufficient intellectual proof of our own. That is the whole point; faith makes us step outside of ourselves, outside of our answers and requires us to be dependent upon him. It acknowledges that we are not autonomous and that we cannot figure out everything by ourselves, we must rely upon God to show us. How can we then prove God to other people? We cannot, it is impossibility, and just as was stated before, we were never meant to.  My faith given to me does not prove anything to anyone else, but it does prove it to me. Each must work this out for himself and while we may point them in the proper direction, we cannot do the work for them.

This is the first of a two part post, to read the second part click here