“What you see is evidence of what you believe. Believe it and you’ll see it.”
Belief is the product of a conscious act on our part. If we do not will ourselves to believe, we will not be able to. If we are not open to the possibilities of belief, we will not believe. As I said, belief is a very conscious decision.
Jesus indicated that when He told His disciples: “Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you.” The presumption was that, if one did not ask, seek, or knock, there would be nothing gained. If someone thinks, “I wish I could get what that person got”, but did nothing to achieve it, how could one expect to get anything?
Some people treat their religion and their faith the same way. They sit in a bubble somewhere and think, “I wish I had faith like that person has,” but never spend time in prayer or reflection or reading the scriptures or other spiritual reading. How can those people get a deep faith if they do not practice any kind of faith.
God is not going to knock us over the head and give us tons of faith. In many ways, we render God powerless when we do not act on any kind of faith. How many times in the Gospels does it say, “And he could do nothing there because of their lack of faith?”
If you want to see something come of your faith, you have to first practice your faith. Start with the basics. Begin a prayer life. Practice it each day. Add more and more to your prayer routine. Get to the point where you are not concentrating upon your prayer but upon your conversation with the Lord. Then, you will be ready to begin a new chapter in your own faith.
FAITH ACTION: Try to add something to the practice of your faith today so that you may grow deeper in faith.