I enjoy listening to Contemporary Christian music and one of my favorite songs right now is the song "Even If" by the band Mercy Me. In particular, one verse resonates strong with me:
They say it only takes a little faith
To move a mountain
Good thing
A little faith is all I have right now
But God, when You choose
To leave mountains unmovable
Give me the strength to be able to sing
It is well with my soul
Oh how I desire to build that kind of faith that believes even when things are going "bad", it is all going to work out just the way that God has it planned, and what I have to do is trust that the way it works out has to happen for what happens next to take place.
You see the essence of the kind of faith that is referred to in Hebrews 11:1 is that you are clinging to something that you can't see and you are trusting that things will work just as they should. We hope that things will work out the way we have them envisioned, but we place our trust in the fact that regardless of the outcome our faith tells us that everything that happens does so for a reason and we, by placing our trust in our faith, believe that the way things works out is for a much bigger reason than our understanding. We "hope" things work out a certain way and we may even pray that things work out a certain way, yet at the end of the day if we have faith our hope is not just for the outcome to be what we want, but instead our hope is that whatever happens it will impact the life of someone or possibly a group of someones. Faith thus is placing our trust in something we can't see.
Just like the team building exercise called the "trust fall" in which a person turns their back to their team and then when given the direction to fall backwards the person falls back trusting that their teammates will be there to catch them when they fall. You can't see if your team members are behind you, but you trust that they are there and that they will not let you hit the ground. If your team members really want to test your faith they get nervously close to the ground and catch you at the last possible moment. Just a little faith allows us to trust that we won't hit the ground.
It would be nice if everyone's faith was so strong that no one ever questioned why things happen like they do or why things don't turn out the way we want them to, but that isn't the way the world spins. In the song above the lyricist laments having only "a little faith" but in reality isn't having a little faith better than having no faith at all? How do you respond when you face a mountain in your life? Do you give up, lay down, or hang your head down and quit? When our trust is tested does it fizzle out or does it stand firm? I don't know about you, but my faith tells me to trust and have faith that whatever mountain stands in front of me I will move it when it is time to move it if it ever is time for me to move it!
If you have no faith it is easy to give up. Purpose, trust, hope, and persistence are depleted when we have no hope. But there is also good news when we bolster our faith with trust and hope. Romans 5:1-5 tells me, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Basically, if you have a little faith it can be sufficient, but just as a muscle you want to develop has to be stretched and torn for it to grow, so does one's faith.
Those that are grounded in faith are tested and that testing shows up in a myriad collection of ways which are unique to each of us. Just as Paul stated above in Romans 5:3 we have to be strong in our sufferings because those things that don't kill us only make us stronger to coin an old adage. If we have no faith we have nothing to hope for. We are defeated before we start, it is a learned helplessness or hopelessness in this case. If you need hope it is my prayer that you will seek hope. I have found that my hope lies in my faith that there is a bigger purpose for my life and that God has a plan for everything and it is my job to live my life to the fullest, never give up in the face of adversity, and always hold on to the hope that does not fail and does not falter. Got a little faith? That's all you need right now!
Coach Carter
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