Activated Faith

God didn't call us to be religious. He called us to be transformed and to live by faith and not by sight.

Too many of us have settled for inherited faith instead of personal conviction. We show up to church, we know the verses, we bow our heads when everyone else does, but somewhere along the way we stop asking, “Do I really know the God I'm following?”

Don't be programmed to love God. Know why you love Him. This builds your trust in Him. A man who never digs into his faith will eventually be shaken by a world that questions it (your trust is shaken.) If your faith only exists because your parents believed, because your wife is the spiritual leader in your home, or because it's just what you've always done, then your foundation isn't as solid as you think. God isn't looking for men who simply go through the motions. He's calling men who seek Him with everything they have.

God is searching for men who open His Word for themselves, wrestle with difficult questions, and refuse to settle for a surface-level faith. Real strength isn't pretending to have all the answers. Real strength is humbly pursuing the One who does. Your family doesn't need another man who knows how to look like a Christian. They need a man who genuinely knows Christ. They need to see a faith that's real and activated by trust in the Holy Spirit.

So, what does real faith look like, and how do we activate it? Look no further than the words of Jesus.

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. - Luke 17:5-6

The disciples of Jesus asked for an increase in faith as a response to a hard teaching of Jesus to forgive those who continually sinned against them. Jesus was trying to voice the kind of forgiveness he had come to provide, and to teach those who follow him that they should emulate the character of God through a similar heart of forgiveness.

This teaching to forgive in such an unconditional way was extremely challenging and quite new for the disciples. They knew that they needed faith to obey. However, they assumed much faith was needed, when in reality, Jesus exposed that only a little faith is needed.

This is a hard teaching for us still today because the underlying truth of Jesus’ words remains — just a little faith can move mountains (Matt 17:20) and uproot the incredibly strong, massive root system of the Mulberry tree (Luke 17:5-6), but we lack the trust to step into the faith that God is ready to give us.

Faith is the belief, trust is the action.

You may believe and have faith that your friend can shoot the apple off of your head, but will you trust him to do so by placing the apple upon your head and standing in front of the bow and arrow?

We must not only have faith that God is working and in our midst, we must also trust Him by handing over our fears, worries, hesitancy, and more than anything — the control.

Men, we should live a life where our trust in God activates our faith and moves us to the missions He commands us to.

Remember, a little faith does a lot, but you must walk your faith out through trusting God in your actions in order for your faith to be activated.

Trust God, and your faith will be seen and experienced by others instead of held inside and questioned.