Boosting your faith in three (kind of) easy steps

If you want to strengthen your faith and be practical about it, consider the following three steps:

1. Determine whether God and the Bible are trustworthy.

Your first step is to get your head in the game by ensuring that you trust God’s Word as the Bible expresses it. If you don’t trust the Bible as the authentic, authoritative Word of God, then you’ll never truly be able to walk in assurance.

But don’t just act as if you think it’s true. Know it’s true. Put the Bible to the test. Investigate the reasons why Christians claim the Bible is inspired, reliable, and inerrant. Does it stand up to scrutiny? If not, then assurance is pointless. But if so, then God is trustworthy, and he is who he says he is.

For more on the reliability of the Bible, see Chapters 2 and 6.

2. Look at what God did in the past.

Even after you believe in your head that God is trustworthy, it takes a while before you have that inner assurance in your heart. Therefore, to jump-start your heart, write stuff down as you see God working in your life – be the situation big or small. Put it in your journal, blog it on the Web, or write it in the freshly poured cement of your neighbor’s driveway. Just do something to remember it.

Remembering is a critical step in growing in your faith, because Christians so easily get spiritual amnesia in times of crisis. If you record them, you can fall back on your past experiences when you have times of doubt and use them to reinforce your assurance and trust in God.

The importance of remembering is a common theme of the Old Testament. In order to strengthen their faith, the Lord kept drilling into the Israelites what he did for them in days past. Consider a sampling of verses from the Book of Deuteronomy:

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (5:15).

“But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt” (7:18).

“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years” (8:2).

“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you” (15:15).

“Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam along the way after you came out of Egypt” (24:9).

“Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past” (32:7).

3. Consider God’s character and trust him.

Remembering past experiences of God’s work is something like spiritual milk for newbies. But at some point in their lives, Christians should mature to spiritual solid foods and be able to walk in confidence, not so much because of what they see God doing, but purely because of their assurance in his character.