Faith isn't from us

Last night a person on our healing team told me how little faith she had for healing right now. This was spurred by the fact that her kids are sick and her clients are dying (she is a palliative care nurse). I've been noticing that when people say those sorts of things there is something in me that goes 'wonk' or 'tilt' and I know that what we are saying is somehow wrong.

It's sort of like if we kept going from full love to little love with the people around us, or from loving our jobs to not being able to stand them, or from joy to despair, bouncing up and down all the time. None of us can ride broncs like that and stay on very long. Sooner or later we just loose our grip and end up with a mouth full of dirt.

Back to the faith thing. I notice that Paul says that faith is "not from yourselves, it is the gift of God", which tells me why I go 'tilt' when I hear people saying they have such little faith. Seems to me that if it is God giving the faith then it's probably not weak or little. It's likely adequate and sufficient and not an empty gift.

So I am going to try and change my vocabulary. I am going to assume I have all the faith I need at all times and that it is "not by works, so no one can boast" and is not from me but is a gift from God. I am going to assume God is right and knows what he is doing. And I am not going to label this gift of faith as 'weak' or 'little'. I'll assume it's strong.

Sometimes we just have to make our minds up about this stuff.

Pa