By Leland Pulley
When most people hear the word faith, they associate it with religion. As a noun faith can be synonymous with a particular religion or church. In a broader sense faith is associated with God or the supernatural. It is true that faith can and should be used relative to both religion and God. But in this article, I am not limiting faith to this alone.
Faith is a principle of action. It is universal because everyone uses it in daily life. We want something or hope to obtain it and then begin to work towards getting it. In this process we are exercising faith in ourselves, our resources, and perhaps the help of others to obtain what we desire. This is simple faith in action. The word faith is appropriate here because you simply do not know if you are going to achieve or obtain what you want or to the degree that you want it. Ultimately, the exercise of faith is replaced with knowledge when your efforts cease. At that point you can see for yourself to what degree you got what you wanted or failed to get what you wanted.
Faith is like a motivator. It supports taking action or risks. Whenever we accept a new challenge, we plug in our faith to pursue it. After setting a goal, faith is essential to making progress in achieving it. Faith helps us to strive despite obstacles in the path or the odds being against our success. The more we utilize faith, and it helps us to do what we want, the stronger and more powerful our faith becomes. Then we can use this stronger faith in seeking or achieving greater things.
There are many ways that we all utilize faith in daily living. Here are some examples.
- You want to learn a skill and in the process exercise faith that you will accomplish this.
- You may seek a degree and start taking classes towards this goal. In the process you are exercising faith in your ability to study and pass exams, persevere and sustain your efforts until a degree is obtained.
- You may decide to run for public office without knowing whether you will win or lose the election. You exercise faith in the process and yourself and start your campaign. During the campaign you exercise faith in your efforts and the strategy that you and your helpers layout to win the election.
- You may choose to start a business and this usually takes a great leap of faith. Without faith, along with some guts and courage, most small businesses would never get started.
- You exercise faith when you make the decision be to become a parent. You commit yourself and hope for the best as you go through a pregnancy, raise a child, and trust that your parental techniques will be successful.
- Another great way to exercise faith is in other people who interact with you in a variety of ways. Without some faith and confidence in others, where would teamwork be and the spirit of cooperation and ultimately friendship and love.
These are this some of the ways that faith is utilized in the lives of all of us.
Faith can be exercised by yourself for yourself or by yourself for others. It can be utilized for small things and great things. It basically has no limits and there is not a single aspect of your life in which some degree of faith is not utilized. This includes religion and God.
It is after the exercise of faith that you gain knowledge and the rewards of your efforts. Too often people seek quick solutions and an easy road to the goal. Unfortunately, it is after the trial of our faith that the reward is obtained, personal growth is manifested, relationships are strengthened, and projects are completed.
It must be remembered that faith is a powerful force in the world for both good and evil. The challenge is to utilize it for good things to bless your life and the lives of others.
In essence faith does not guarantee success in any endeavor because there are other variables which influence the results too. What faith does do is get us involved and help sustain us as we strive to do good things for ourselves and others. For this reason, it is one of the most important principles of life to live by, and one of the best measures of the quality of life in any society.
I challenge you to consider how you exercise faith in your life. How much do you use it and in which ways? How conscious are you of the faith you exercise, especially while utilizing it? This is important because the more aware you are of the faith you are using while using it, the more credit you give to faith for being an influence in your life. This helps you to refine your faith and strengthen it more over time. Set a goal to utilize faith more consistently on a daily basis in your life. To start I suggest you figure out one way to be more faithful in some aspect of your life. Thereafter, you can expand your efforts to become more faithful in other areas of your life. Monitor your overall strength and quality of faith, and you will see it grow more over time with attention paid to it.
Key Words – faith, religion, church, God, principle of action, daily life, knowledge, motivator, progress, no limits, good and evil, be more faithful
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