Got Faith?
Mallory Polivka is passionate about Jesus and anything related to cats, she is a performing artist and mental health professional based in Los Angeles, CA. She was born and raised in Midwest, USA and grew up with church exposure to the saving grace of Jesus. It wasn't until after a series of hardships as a teenager and young adult that Jesus captivated her heart with His unfailing love and she placed her faith in Him alone. Since then, she grows day by day more and more aware and awestruck of His love and grace. Mallory has experience leading arts-based and youth ministries, loves to share Jesus with everyone and anyone through word and deed, and takes special interest in connecting psychology with theology. She is the founder and voice behind Girl, Look Up: A blog and upcoming podcast dedicated to encouraging others in Jesus with authentic, rich study and application of the Word of God. Much, much love to you all!
Faith. Everyone has it. Everyone has faith in something or someone to some degree or quantity. I’ve heard people say, “I don’t believe in anything,” “I don’t have any faith,” or some derivative of these statements. Often these words were spoken in relation to spirituality or religion, yet I believe that we each have faith to some extent – even if it isn’t in a deity or higher power.
Faith can be defined as the “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” (https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/faith).
It is part of our nature and survival to have faith – in people, in the big and small things, and in the simple and complex. Do you trust that the sun will rise every morning? When you sit down, do you trust that the chair will hold you? Can you think of someone in whom you have trust – even just a little bit? Can you imagine your life without having confidence in anything or anyone? Life would be pretty dull and desperate. What would you hope for? Maybe you have faith in yourself, a significant other, family member, the universe, human goodness, God, karma, nature, etc. The bottom line is – ya got faith.
For the Christian and the Christian life, faith in Jesus Christ is foundational. Plain and simple. Faith in the saving grace and finished work of Jesus Christ gives us eternal life (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:8-9). Ongoing faith keeps us in sweet fellowship with Jesus. In this context, faith is a beautiful, life-giving thing.
Faith can also be a massive struggle. Just as much as people have faith and can gain faith, we can lose or lack faith. I bet you can think of a time when your trust in someone was broken, maybe even horribly. Or perhaps you had faith in someone, and they let you down. Something happens, and faith dwindles or immediately extinguishes. I’ve experienced this for myself, and it’s really hard.
My faith in Jesus has certainly had its fair share of ups and downs over the course of my lifetime. There have been times when my faith has felt strong, and other times, I’m just barely hanging on.
I remember a particular period of my life when I was really struggling. My faith felt so weak. I was surrounded by other Christians who seemed to be perpetually happy all the time. Always smiling. Always saying, “Oh, God is so good!!” Honestly, I was pretty annoyed by them. I was annoyed by their joy. But even more so, I wanted to have that kind of joy. I was envious. I longed to be happy and have that kind of joy instead of the utter misery my life was saturated in. I thought that their faith must be so strong because of how joyful they seemed to be. I thought I was a terrible Christian because I didn’t have that kind of joy. I thought there was something wrong with me and my faith because I was suffering so badly.
I thought that the more joy you have, the greater your faith must be. A fruit of the Spirit is joy, right? So, it seems natural that if you have great faith, you have great joy. Bada bing, bada boom. And I still believe this to be true. I believe that, no matter what happens in life, you can have great joy in Jesus Christ. I have lived this truth! However, I measure the strength of faith differently now because I understand my relationship with my Savior differently – better even.
Great suffering does not automatically indicate weak faith. It was through that suffering and misery in my life that Jesus finally got to me. He got me to finally start trusting in Him.
I used to measure my faith on the basis of how I felt. If I felt great, my faith must have been great. If I felt awful, I believed the quality of my faith corresponded with my emotions. I also used to measure my faith in how firmly I was holding onto Jesus. If I felt like I was hanging on by threads, I assumed my faith to be weak and insignificant.
But faith in Jesus is not simply summed up like that.
The greatness of faith is in whom or the object of the faith rests. And as I said before, for the Christian, Jesus Christ is that object of faith. Is He great? According to the Bible, oh yes He is. Wouldn’t then the greatness of the object produce a greatness in faith regardless of life circumstances or human emotion?
It’s not about how great I feel. It’s about how great Jesus is.
And Jesus is indeed GREAT. When we are just hardly holding onto Him, He holds us steadfastly and will never, ever let go.
Some days, faith does look celebratory and joyful, and there is nothing wrong with that! In fact, it’s pretty nice when faith is like this! Faith can even be renewed in circumstances in which there is a happy answer to prayer or perhaps a miraculous gift. The greatness of the faith though is still in the greatness of God and how much He holds you in His amazing love.
And some days, faith is more like a quiet, solemn whisper of “I’m going to trust You” even though you don’t really quite believe you can trust God or even want to. Like you are trying to convince yourself you can believe God enough to just get you to the next moment and take another breath. It’s repeating to yourself, “He is still good,” when things look far from good and you’re not sure when it’s going to be good again. Sometimes, faith is just telling yourself God’s promises through streams of tears, heaving sobs, crying out, or deep anguish. The depths of sorrow do not minimize the greatness of faith when that faith is in Jesus. Because of His greatness. Because of how securely and powerfully He loves, cares for, and holds onto you. I truly believe that trusting Jesus when life sucks or in the absence of happiness is great faith because the faith is not based in circumstance or emotion – the object of faith is appropriately placed in Jesus Christ.
Why could Peter walk on the water? Because of his faith right? Was his faith great? Arguably so – but who was the object of his faith? Jesus. His eyes were fixed on Jesus, and he walked on the water to Him. When he focused on the huge storm that surrounded him, the object of his faith was in how terrible the wind and waves were – not Jesus. The amount of trust remained the same. I imagined that once he looked at the storm, he trusted that it would consume him. But what differs the object of the faith – one made him sink, the other made him do the impossible!
“He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” ~ Matthew 17:20
Do you know how big a mustard seed is? It’s usually about 1 to 2 millimeters or 0.039 to 0.079 inches in diameter. That’s tiny. It’s also the smallest seed that can be planted in the ground. Like other seeds, the mustard seed has two options: Grow or die. Jesus said that even faith itty bitty like a mustard seed can do the impossible – that’s because that faith is rooted in Jesus. Faith like a mustard seed planted in Jesus is going to make that faith GROW. It’s not the size. It’s where. It’s in what that makes the difference.
So, where is your faith planted? What or who is the object of your faith? Where are you looking and trusting in the storm?
“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith…” ~ Hebrews 12:2
Who is the author, perfector, and finisher of your faith? Is it you? Nope. It’s Jesus Christ. Your faith is His to work out. When you feel like your faith is no good and perhaps you’re a bad Christian because you don’t really want to believe or keep trusting, guess what? You have a Savior who works endlessly, tirelessly, and lovingly for you and your faith – to perfect it, grow it, strengthen it, and make it beautiful.
Take heart, dear friend. Your faith, even when you believe it to be feeble, is mighty and lovely when it is in Jesus Christ. He is the One who makes you walk on the water when the waves are trashing and crashing all around you. He is the One who takes that mustard seed and makes it a mighty tree.
