How to Develop Your Sense of Faith

What do you really believe beyond any shadow of doubt?

Is there anything?

We live in a world that seemingly questions anything and everything.

Do you have faith that the chair that you are sitting in won’t fall apart and throw you to the ground?

Do you have faith that your family will still love you tomorrow?

Do you believe that the earth is round?

Do you believe in God?

How did you get that sense of faith?

How to develop your sense of faith

Preparation

The reality is that you may not even remember the details of where the origin of their faith began.

How did you learn to believe that the kitchen chair would hold you?

How many times would a chair have to break in your presence before you would lose faith in that chair?

If the injury was serious enough it might be the first time it broke.

Would you lose faith in all chairs or just wooden ones, just yellow ones or just ones that are in a kitchen?

We go through life with a serious of experiences that will shape our faith whether or not we are aware of it or not.

Our sense of faith is built on a thousand tiny lessons and experiences.

While those experiences and life lessons are important, how we interpret those experiences are even more critical when we talk about faith.

Most of my work is centered on people who are hurting and wounded from life experiences.

Strangely I once met two young ladies, both about the same age and had many similar physical traits that were both abused by the same man.

The experiences were nearly identical in nearly every way.

However, how they interpreted the events was much different.

One of them was very cold and filled with hate toward men of all kinds.

The other could not find a man that she was not attracted to passionately.

One took the events and had faith that she was beautiful and desirable and the other that she was dirty and ugly.

In reality neither of these extremes is healthy; but they both had developed a certain of what they believed.

Regardless there is a foundation that is laid for us to work with and our culture will largely influence what we believe is possible.

If you long to develop your sense of faith in anything or anyone, it is a powerful first step to go back and determine where your current beliefs originated.

Are they accurate?

What sort of rethinking might be needed?

Our thoughts and emotions are powerful tools and they are controlled by our level of faith.

Consider someone who believes that if they jump out of an airplane even with a parachute will die.

They will need to retrain their faith in the parachute or more accurately the one who packed their parachute to be able to step out of the plane.

I challenge you to expand your faith beyond what is currently called impossible.

Proof

Some of the lessons we learn may not really be true.

A child that was lost at an amusement park may believe that he was abandoned and unloved.

As her grows older he may develop trust issues.

Anytime someone is late to a meeting or if he suddenly feels alone he will be filled with fear.

As he processes his feelings he may not even remember the incident from his childhood.

But his faith is in a belief that he can only depend on himself or that everyone will leave him.

He may even fully believe that he is unloved.

In order to overcome such pain he will need to find proof to overcome his faith.

Courageously, he will need to trust in someone.

When that one comes through for him and he honestly feels the love he can trust another and then another.

It will be the first one that will be the difficult one.

Momentum is our friend in the quest to develop a sense of faith regardless of what the object of that faith is to be.

Again taking time to examine the sources of your beliefs can be beneficial.

Maybe you had some traumatic experience with someone of a different race so even today you are filled with angst or even hatred toward an entire race of folks.

That one incident by a person of bad character is shaping your beliefs.

Courageously take time to get to know someone of that race.

To seek proof is a sign of maturity. 

Sure it is easier in many ways just to grow old with your current beliefs but life will be incomplete.

We must find our faith and do all that we can to prove that it is based on truth

Most professionals have developed faith in their abilities or they would not be professionals.

We hear about some new technique or skill and after study we begin to apply it.

Maybe it is a new tennis or golf swing or maybe some new leadership concept.

Put it into practice and see if it is real.

For many years most people believed that the earth was flat because that is what they could see.

True faith must ultimately expand beyond what we can see with any of our senses.

We have been given a creative mind that can explore and study to find out truth.

The challenge is to utilize it often and deliberately.

Look at pictures from space, if you are more daring you might go on a trip and just keep going east until suddenly you find yourself in the same spot.

Take action on this statement of faith.

Other items in life may not have as much physical proof that they exist.

As you build a faith in God you might ask questions about what are people like who have an honest faith in a god?

What are they like in practice?

Do they seem happier?

Are they more fulfilled?

Do they serve and love others better?

Does their faith reach beyond a church building or fellowship or is it a Sunday only sort of faith?

Find a place of faith and investigate what they believe and put it into practice.

All of the reading and outside media’s portrayal of faith groups generally breaks down the moment you meet someone from that faith group.

Take a chance and practice a bit of faith.

I make it through the day believing that my office chair will not collapse, that my family loves me and will welcome me home, that the world is round and that there is a God that has a plan for my life.

These and other elements of faith help me get through each day.

Build your sense of faith and find a much more enjoyable and fulfilling life.