What is Faith and How Can You Get Some?

What is faith and how can you get some? You have an idea of what faith is because you all used to have some. When you were a child, you had a kind of faith. You believed that every day was going to be great. You believed that most everyone had your best interests in mind. For this reason, you had to be warned about strangers.

I walked into a restaurant one night. There was a little four-year-old girl sitting at the bar with her grandparents. She looked at me and said: “Hi! What’s your name?” Apparently, she not only had faith but also a few things she needed to learn about caution before she turned 21.

Have you ever watched a toddler in public? Like at a grocery store? The parent puts him down on the floor and it is like he is on wheels — all over the place. He doesn’t know where he is supposed to go and not go. He has faith that anything is possible and that the world is his to explore. But time goes on and life teaches him a hard lesson. The world is not his oyster. He starts running into walls and dead ends and loses some of that natural “faith”.

But there are other things that erode your faith. Ever read the newspaper? First, there is always something about parents who are awful. A child is abused and buried in the back yard. A woman presses a hot iron to her son’s arm. Some of these kids have no chance at faith. A business owner is killed on the street. A woman is beaten and buried in a trash pile. An officer uses his police computer to commit identity theft. A deputy beats a teenager. A runaway teen is sold for sex. That is all in just one day’s newspaper folks.

Sometimes you hear things about faith: “Live your dreams.” “Build it and they will come.” “Faith can move mountains.” When you hear these things you might say: “Wow! All I need is more personal faith and I can do anything I want!” Really?

The truth is: you do not really have faith. Instead, faith has a way of having you. Faith is bigger than you are. Faith is not only bigger than us, it is older than us. Faith is a force that has been set loose in the world. People carry it through the ages and it ends up carrying you.

What is faith? Faith is trust. How is it that you come to trust someone? Do you trust them because of some quality within yourself: “I am a trusting kind of person”? Or do you trust someone because of a quality that they have? You trust because someone has earned your trust over time. So faith isn’t something that you have or acquire on your own, it is given to you. In all that you have been through something or someone has earned your trust and in turn you have learned to trust.

I used to have a job working in a store downtown. I was a teenager, and my job was to do anything that I was told to do. I would do this all day. At the end of the day, with evening coming on the store would close and I would walk to my car in order to go home. That is when the church bells would ring. It was five o’clock. I had put in a whole day’s work. As I walked down the sidewalk, it felt good-real good. I had done what I was supposed to do. When it is all over, at the end of the day, at the end off all the days there will not be a reward for your great faith. It is enough to have lived and know that you have done what you were meant to do.

What is faith and how can you get some? You have an idea of what faith is because you all used to have some. When you were a child you had a kind of faith. To experience the childlike faith that you had in the beginning you may have to wait till the end. Not just the end of the day but the end of all the days.

I am a person of faith. Sometimes I have to ask: “Am I just shallow, or am I actually healthy?” Because I believe that in the end, no matter what happens, no matter how terrible it gets, no matter how bad the news is; things will be made right. There will be something like redemption. That’s faith.