By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

“Faith gathers strength by waiting and praying” – E.M. Bounds

Who in your life do you think has the most faith in God? That when you hear this person talk or watch how they act, their faith in God just radiates out of them. They have such big faith that your faith seems puny in comparison.

You might be like me. I don’t see how my faith could ever grow to the extreme level that those special people have reached. When I think about people with such big faith, I sometimes cry out to God, just as the disciples did in Luke 17:

“The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’”

God will you strengthen my faith and increase it!

But don’t you remember how Jesus responded to the disciples when they cried out to Him?

“He replied, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it will obey you.’” (Luke 17:6).

The good news is that if we have faith in God, even if its as small as a mustard seed, and we accept Him as our Lord and Savior, we will be saved. God can take our mustard seed faith and grow and grow and grow it.

Through trials, hardship, waiting, and prayer, our faith is grown. With every circumstance and situation in which we depend on God, our faith grows all the more.

I think if we turned back time and looked at those people in our lives who have big faith, we’d see that they began as new Christians with small, puny, mustard seed faith. But those people endured trials of every kind, built spiritual endurance, and slowly, throughout their relationship with Christ, built their faith..

Bigger faith doesn’t come easily. It comes through difficult circumstances and dependence on God through the storms of life. If you meet someone with big faith, chances are that their past is filled with difficulties, adversity, and misfortune.

But that’s what grows our faith: relying on the strength of God when life is hard.

Think about Mary, the mother of Christ. Look at her faith when she found out she was with child:

“How will this happen? I have never had a man” (Luke 1:34).

But it didn’t end here. From the hardships and trials that she encountered while she was pregnant to standing by while her son was crucified for the sins of the world, Mary’s faith was grown. God was able to grow her faith because of the attitude towards God’s will she had from the very beginning:

“I am willing to be used of the Lord. Let it happen to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38).

May we pray the same.

Parents: Share with your children someone in your life who has big faith. Explain to them how big faith comes about.