The Gift of Faith
1 Corinthians 12:9; Mark 11:20-26
An exciting discovery I’ve made in the course of doing 3 or 4 Gifted and Called Courses here at St. Luke’s with different groups of people is the discovery that one of the most prevalent spiritual gifts among those who have done the course is the Gift of Faith. To me this is very exciting because there can be no doubt that of all the gifts, faith is probably most central, and has the most potential to radically transform a person and a community. Faith is foundational for acting on words of knowledge or wisdom. Faith is catalytic to gifts of healings and miracles. Faith is crucial to receiving God’s Word through prophecy and tongues. It is also exciting to me because I believe that God has awesome tasks and purposes for St. Luke’s to fulfil. For us to do so, we will need to be exercising awful amounts of faith. But let’s look deeper at this gift before I get ahead of myself.
What is this Gift?
I suppose one should first define faith before going any further. The Greek word is pistis and it means a firm persuasion or conviction. It is a belief that is so strong that one is willing to act on it and trust its truth. For me the greatest illustration ever of faith is Jesus Himself. In Mark 9:31 He teaches His disciples that He has to go to Jerusalem, be betrayed into the hands of men, be killed by them. And then He says, “And after He is killed, He will rise the third day.” Can you imagine how hard it must have been for a fully human Jesus to go knowingly to His death … believing that He would miraculously be raised from the dead? He must have had tremendous faith in God … enough faith to surrender to the will of God because He believed that He would be raised again.
Faith is a firm conviction and trust. But getting a bit deeper into the matter of faith reveals that there are a few different kinds of faith spoken of in the Bible:
1. First there is saving faith. Saving faith is what Ephesians 2:8 is talking about when it says: “By grace you have been saved through faith.” This is thus when we place our faith specifically in Jesus as our Saviour and Lord and submit our lives to Him in total trust for our eternal salvation. Our faith is that Jesus is God and that surrendering our lives to Him will mean life! We trust that this is true and so we surrender.
2. Next there is “fruit faith”. This is a faith which is a part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. As we mature in the Lord, the Holy Spirit produces more and more faith in God in general in our lives … you might say our faith grows … which results in a greater faithfulness to God in every activity. This faith is an issue of character.
3. The spiritual gift of faith is a special impartation of faith by the Holy Spirit at a given time and for a given purpose. At a particular moment when faith is needed in the Body of Christ, the Lord gives the gift of faith to one or many. An Old Testament example of this kind of faith is when Joshua is given the crazy idea of getting his army to march around Jericho once a day for 6 days and 7 times on the 7th day. Nowhere else in human history was this a successful military tactic. But Joshua believed with all his heart that God had told him to do this … and so he did it … and the walls of Jericho fell down.
What does it accomplish?
Being a spiritual gift, the general result will be that the common good of the Body of Christ is extended – the Body will become stronger. But the specific result of the gift of faith will depend on the situation. So let’s look at a few examples. 1. In Acts 27, Paul is on a boat about to be shipwrecked when the Lord reveals to him that everyone on board will be saved. In v.25 he says to the others on board, “Take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.” Even though the men on board were unbelievers, they were encouraged by Paul’s faith. So the gift of faith can encourage the Body in difficult situations. Today someone with the gift of faith will often speak words of encouragement and exhortation to others whose faith might be weak or wavering.
2. In the Old Testament even, special faith in a particular situation helped Elijah face off against the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). In Daniel 6:23 we are told that the lions had not hurt Daniel “because he believed in his God.” What both these men had in common is that they were in danger because of their refusal to abandon their faith. The gift of faith for them kept them faithful to the Lord despite persecution and threats. The same is true today. Someone with the gift of faith will be given the strength thereby to endure difficulty and remain faithful to the Lord in the face of great pressure.
3. The most obvious result of the gift of faith is miracles. In fact, Jesus teaching on the gift of faith would suggest that we should call this kind of faith “mountain-moving faith”. In 1 Cor. 13:2 Paul talks about love being so important that “even if I have faith to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Clearly then the spiritual gift of faith is “mountain-moving faith”. A mountain in this context is that which cannot be overcome or accomplished by human effort. Thus its removal requires something that is humanly impossible. A ‘mountain’ is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. The gift of faith makes the impossible possible. This kind of faith Jesus describes as faith the size of a mustard seed. Which makes me think of the power of faith. I’m sure at some time you’ve seen a picture of a tree growing out of a rock … it’s seed fell into the tiniest of cracks in the rock and there it germinated. With time the life locked away in the seed grew … the tree grew and as it grew its roots gradually pushed through the rock and eventually the rock will split as the power of the tree overcomes it. Faith, Jesus says, is like that seed. When it is planted into an impossible situation … the power locked away in it is also released and that power … the power of God can overcome even the most impossible situation. And there are no limits here. There are no particular size problems that lie outside of the realm of what the gift of faith can accomplish. In the account of the moving mountain in Matthew 17:20, Jesus says “Nothing will be impossible to (the one who has faith)”. Nothing. It is not that faith can be applied to some situations and not others.
In ANY situation at all that the Holy Spirit gives the gift of faith, that faith can release a miracle, a healing, a sign or wonder.
The object of faith
If faith is a firm conviction and a willingness to trust … then it must have an object. I cannot jump out of the plane with faith alone. I must have faith in something – in this case the parachute. This is why in Scripture, every teaching about faith is that it is to be “faith in God.” It is never faith in faith … nor is it faith in my words or actions. The Greek words for “have faith in God” literally mean, “Have a faith which rests on God”. Scripture encourages every believer to have faith in God. And when it comes to things that are humanly impossible you had better make sure your faith is resting on the God for whom all things are possible. This faith does not have to be particularly big or strong – it can be as small as a mustard seed. The crucial thing is that when it is truly faith – even if it is as small as a mustard seed – it is enough of a “confidence and trust” to get me acting on it.
Mustard seed faith in a parachute would be just enough faith to get me jumping. Mustard seed faith in God will be just enough to get me acting on it; and this is the faith that the Lord requires of every believer. But remember, Jesus said, “If you have faith and do not doubt” (Matt. 21:21) then the mountain will be cast into the sea.” The spiritual gift of faith excludes doubt. If there is doubt present then there is no gift of faith present. But then, you ask, how is it possible to believe something that firmly when all the evidence suggests that it is humanly impossible. Surely there must be some doubt there. In normal circumstances that would be true. But not with the gift of faith. For this is about supernatural faith – not normal faith. When the Lord gives the spiritual gift of faith, the person receiving it has NO doubt whatsoever. They know because they know that this is it!
Where does the gift come from?
There can be no doubt. The spiritual gift of faith is from the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural ability to trust God in a particular situation … and it comes from God Himself. But, we are also to desire it and ask for it. The apostles did so in Luke 17:5, and we are instructed to desire the gifts in 1 Corinthians too. Furthermore it appears that when we are people of committed and regular prayer, we are more open to faith. Jesus accused the disciples of being unbelieving when they could not cast out a demon in Mark 9:29, and said that they would only have been able to do it by prayer. Maybe the link between faith and prayer is that much prayer opens us up to receive from the Lord … It certainly acts as an antidote to doubt and fear as much prayer grows our trust in God and the evidence we have for His mighty, miracle-working power. It also opens us up to a better awareness and understanding of God’s will. And when I understand and am sure about the will of God, then doubt is decreased exponentially.
