Faith is a choice!
by Roger Pook
How many times has someone told you “You need more faith”? Or maybe they quote you the words of Jesus that your problems could be solved if you just had ‘faith like a grain of mustard-seed’. From this we might think that faith is some sort of quality, like courage or mercy, which we have to grow within us until it becomes part of our very nature.
This is all very well until people tell us that we “don’t have enough faith” in our response to a problem - as if more faith meant fewer problems – and then we feel condemned because we are falling short of some unattainable standard of faith.
However, faith is not something that we have to work up inside ourselves by our own effort, maybe by more prayer, more Bible-reading, more church attendance... In basic terms, faith is a just a choice, a simple decision as to what to do in any given circumstance.
This is the choice: I choose to act AS IF God loves me, AS IF He knows about this problem and AS IF He has the answer.
So, my ‘grain of mustard-seed’ is not a small faith. It is just the time that it takes to make the choice, based on no visible evidence at all (Hebrews 11:1), that I’m going to trust that God knows about my problem and has the answer. Then I’ll act on that choice.
Prayer: Dear Father, I make this simple choice – I choose to act as if You love me, as if You know about my problems and as if You have the answer. This is my grain of mustard-seed, and I offer it to You. Amen.
Roger Pook For 21 years Roger Pook and his wife Christine served in Central and Eastern Europe, based in Hungary at the Úr Rétje centre of Ellel Ministries. From there they travelled and ministered across the length and breadth of the former communist world. In 2018 Roger retired as Regional Director and they now live back in the UK, where Roger still serves on the Executive Leadership and as a trustee of The Christian Trust. They still travel for the Kingdom!
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