Faith: The Essential Virtue

Anyone reading the Bible, not least the New
Testament part, must be struck by the considerable
emphasis which is placed on faith. Of course, faith is what ultimately ensures our salvation so we would
expect it to receive considerable stress. That aspect of faith is what takes us out of this life into the Kingdom.

Yet this is not an act of faith which, as it
were, stands alone. It is the ultimate act of faith which, albiet having guided our lives, comes at the culmination of those lives. Jesus clearly intended those lives to be lived through a succession of acts of faith.

TWO PRINCIPLES OF FAITH
There are two principles of faith which are of great importance and which should guide our lives.

1. Faith Is The Byeword For Those Who Watch.
What this means is that we need to be people who constantly watch in faith. We watch both for where and when the Lord is active in our lives and the world around us; but also for where he could be brought into a situation through our prayer of faith.

This general attitude can and should be regarded as a way of life: we are always being, not merely aware of God, but of where he is active and where he could be active if we intervened in prayer for his action. For, in the latter respect, Jesus told us:
"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. (Luke 11. 9, 10 NIV)
Now, it would surely have been superfluous for him to have said this if God always supplies what is needed anyway, without his being asked. The unavoidable implication of what he says here is surely that there are, in fact, many things which we do not receive simply because we do not ask for them.

Hence our lives should be expressed through a repeated asking, seeking and knocking. This is not to be implemented in a selfish seeking for one's own advantage, but through a constant watching in our lives at the events around us, and which occur in the world, for those opportunities through which God can intervene as a consequence of our acts and prayers of faith.

Sometimes these may concern things which do affect us personally and directly; at other times they will relate to world events in which we are not directly involved but which we do need to pray for in faith. So faith becomes the byword for Christians, the thing which, along with love, is our distinguishing characteristic.

2. Love Is The Sensitivity Of The Poor In Spirit
This may seem quite different from the first principle but is, in fact, highly comlementary to it. The poor in spirit are such because they know their absolute reliance on God for all things -- and that reliance is a continual act of faith. Indeed, this can be seen as an essential underpinning for the first principle. One of the main reasons why some Christians are not people of an active and daily expressed life of faith is because, although they may acknowledge it in principle, they lack the realisation of their utter dependency on God for all things.

Our objective is to make every aspect of our life subject to faith. Even when we pray, we should not do so without asking the Holy Spirit to be our Pray-er. (see my book "The Keys To How To Pray" on the Christianword web site given below). When asked about it, almost any knowledgeable Christian will affirm the role of the Spirit in this respect. But how often do we form and structure our prayer our selves?. Yet this is a practice which separates the faithful Christian from the less faithful Christian. Truly this is where our life of faith should start. But it should not end there. Indeed, if i sit down to write an article like this without asking for the Spirit's guidance and inspiration, what good is that?

Let us begin our life of faith with and in prayer. Paul advises us that it is the Holy Spirit who does our praying, not us. For example, Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:18 that we should pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. So however we are praying and whatever we are praying for, we are doing it in faith and therefore relying on the Holy Spirit to accomplish what we cannot.