Hebrews 11:6 tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please God. Since pleasing God is essential to an abundant life, building our faith is a natural step. We are living in a world where the temptation to doubt God is constant. His children need more than ever to learn how to trust in His goodness and have strong faith.
Below are some practical ways to move toward a stronger faith and a heart that trusts God’s promises. Take a moment to review the following list and discover your next step to deeper faith and trust in God.
Our faith will naturally grow when we make a conscious effort to look for ways to trust God. Pray and seek the Lord’s help when faced with a need or going through a difficult time in your life. Then, watch and wait. He will move because you are trusting in Him.
Once you see His intervention or Him speaking into your difficulty, you will have something to hold onto; your heavenly Father cares and moves on your behalf! The next time you find it difficult to trust God, remember He moved on your behalf before, and He will do it again. Step by step, you will build a strong faith that will help you overcome life’s challenges.
When we stand face to face with spiritual obstacles and feel the crushing weight of our burdens, it causes us to forget what God has already done for us. A simple way to keep your focus on God in those moments is to start a prayer and praise journal.
Use a journal to write down prayer requests, including the date you entrusted them into God’s hands. When God answers your prayer, add that information to your journal. Your journal will contain the evidence you need to face difficult times with a deeper trust in your loving Father’s faithfulness.
Difficult things often arrive suddenly in our lives, as if dropping out of the sky onto our path. All you can see at that moment is a mountain. It blocks your progress and your vision of what lies ahead. When we focus on the mountain, we lose faith in God.
The Bible tells of God’s children overcoming obstacles with His help. Ask God to give you the strength to climb your mountain or make a way through to the other side. As God takes you by the hand and leads you to victory, your trust will soon overshadow all your mountains.
When we receive bad news or come face to face with a difficult circumstance, often it shakes us to our core and fear sets in. A perfect way to build the kind of faith that does not fail is to always trust in God’s plans. He knows your future and has plans to prosper you. Life-shattering moments are no surprise to God, even if tears fill our path.
Memorize Jeremiah 29:11 and hold it in your heart. When you face the temptation to doubt God’s presence in your life, this Bible verse can be a reminder that you never walk alone. Walking with the Lord is the best way to learn to trust Him with everything.
A great way to increase your faith is to pray for the promises found in God’s Word. Some promises in the Bible are for a specific person or people. Faith, however, calls us to believe that if God did it for those people, He can do it for us.
Search for Bible verses that you can pray over any situation. Your faith can easily grow with each answer to a prayer that you receive, each promise He grants, and each deliverance He provides. He can also test your faith when He determines it is in your best interest for you to pass through the circumstance. Praying His Word back to Him will show you a lot about your faith and teach you about the will of God.
Our lives are full of things demanding our attention and draining our time. There is a remedy for these distractions: start listening to the Word of God on a daily basis. Instead of listing to music on the radio during your commute, you could try listening to a podcast of your favorite pastor. Instead of spending two or three hours a night watching your favorite TV programs, set aside some time for a Bible study instead.
Philippians 4:8 provides a list of what we should focus on, but life chokes these things out. Taking intentional steps to listen to the teaching of His Word will bring direction, hope, and growth to your life.
There is a simple way to grow your faith: ask for Christ Jesus to increase it. His followers asked Him to increase their faith in Luke 17:5, and they saw His miracles and listened to His teachings firsthand. If they needed more faith to accomplish the Lord’s will, how much more do we?
To build your faith, ask the Lord to increase it to the measure needed to fulfill His will. God is faithful to His children, and His desire is for us to walk in faith. So, boldly ask the Lord for a full measure of faith.
There are a lot of bad things dominating our hearts and minds, most of which will serve no purpose in hard times. In comparison, the Word of God is a pillar of fire guiding us through the darkness of difficult circumstances.
Reading the Bible reveals God’s goodness and faithfulness. Your faith will deepen when you learn about the God you serve. Memorizing Bible verses will help you when faced with trials. You will come out the other side of your trial in victory. You won’t be victorious because of your strength, but because you trusted in God. Each time you overcome with help from the Word of God, your trust will be stronger.
The sin of self-reliance is a prime example of lacking trust in God. If you are not trusting God, then your faith is based on something else. Having faith in other things restricts the power of God in your life. Eventually, you are disappointed because of human limitations.
Note the areas of your life in which you have not surrendered into God’s hands and then ask Him to take control. Trust your life to God’s plans and God’s ways. This will grow your faith because you learn that His ways are far better than anything you could have imagined. Surrender results in a stronger faith and a deeper trust in God.
Mark 9:24 is a picture of what happens when unbelief meets Jesus Christ face-to-face. The father in this story brought a profound, personal need before the Lord, and the encounter revealed his unbelief. It is best not to wait until you are in a crisis to discover your unbelief because unbelief hinders your faith.
Ask God to examine your heart and write down what He reveals. Fight against your unbelief with the help of the Word of God. As you move from unbelief to belief, your faith and trust in God will flourish.
When difficult times come, it is easy to question the goodness of God. Your heart then starts equating God’s goodness with your will, and this leads to disappointment. Resist the urge to think God does not care about you when things do not go as you desire. You must fix your mind and spirit on the promises of God and trust Him no matter what happens.
The purpose for suffering in your life is in God’s hands. He knows your deepest and most desperate needs and is ready to discuss them with you. He has prepared enough faith for you to be victorious, so ask Him to fill your spirit with all you need. There is pain in the night, but with Him, joy comes in the morning.
The Old Testament tells how some of God’s children trusted in everything but Him. The results were devastating and painful. Today’s culture offers many idols for us to trust, but they are just empty substitutions for the Living God.
Good things like church, jobs, and family can become idols, and God directly opposes idols of any kind. Pray and ask Him to reveal if you have based your faith on anything other than Him. Tear down any substitutes the Holy Spirit reveals and request His help to have faith in God alone. Once the Lord helps you remove the obstacles to growth, you will experience a greater measure of faith.
Many Christians struggle with doubt, and God’s Word teaches us that we are not alone. John doubted Christ’s identity, and even Thomas did not believe it was Christ when he saw Him.
God is always calling His children out to deeper waters and into unknown areas. Why? To help us learn to trust Him. So, how do you deal with faith-crushing doubt? Pray and confess it to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. Fight against your doubt with the Word of God. Look up Bible verses that will help you make your every thought captive & obedient to Christ. Ask the Lord to grant you the faith to overcome your doubt, and it will surprise you how much your trust will grow.
Sin erodes our faith in God and causes us to feel we have lost God’s love. When we do not feel loved or are ashamed, we avoid God’s presence, just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Our feelings drive us away from faith in God and His Word.
A great way to build your faith is to repent and confess your sins. Acknowledging God’s holiness and aligning your plans under His sovereignty will open your life up to new and exciting ways to grow your faith. Ask God to show you if you have sin that needs forgiving. As you make His will the desire of your heart, you give glory to God and start your journey to a stronger faith.
Often, we see people who seem to radiate strength and faith in God. If we are honest, we wish we had that kind of faith. How did they get to their spiritual condition? They stepped out of the boat, tested the waters, and trusted that God would hold them up or teach them to swim.
Serving others is a perfect way to step out in faith and see how God works. The first thing to do is to find something you enjoy doing and serve in that area. Your church should have many opportunities to serve. If they do not have a ministry for you, then start one! God can use your joy in serving as a catalyst for growth in your life and impact the eternal life of others.
What do you depend on for your security and wellbeing? Is it a person other than Jesus? Is it in your job, talent, intelligence, or status? When you base your faith on things or people, then in time, your security crumbles. Jobs and fortunes are lost, and people die or leave us. There is always someone more intelligent, and your status is only a social media post away from being destroyed. It only takes one catastrophe to awaken us to the realization that we have been building our lives on sand and not on the Lord Jesus, our Rock.
Make a list of the important things in your life, then pray and give them into the Lord’s faithful hands. Ask the Father to bless you with the faith you need to trust Him completely. Then, you can stand firm no matter what bad things happen.
It is hard to be content if things do not go the way we want or when in the middle of a long trial. Discontentment, while natural, shows a lack of trust in God. The children of God must fight against discontentment. We should decide in advance to stand firm in our faith and trust in the goodness of God, no matter what.
Whatever you are facing, focus on what He is accomplishing through your disappointment or suffering and on the promises of God. Remember to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of your faith, and He will help you grow and trust even in your suffering.
A great enemy of our faith is spiritual warfare. The Apostle Paul wrote the book of Ephesians in AD60, but God’s Word is just as alive, active, and relevant today.
Satan’s desire is for the children of God to doubt and lose faith. Satan attacks our faith because it is our shield and protects us from his fiery darts (Ephesians 6:16). Before you find your faith wavering, read Ephesians 6 and make the Armor of God a part of your daily life. We find the secret to having enough faith in verse 10, “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” We do nothing in our strength, but our faith in God activates His power. Pray and confess your need for His power and protection. Ask Him to strengthen your faith so that you can stand against anything the enemy sends your way.
Pride causes significant damage to our faith by challenging our trust in God. Pride teaches us we have all the answers, so we believe the lie and look to our own understanding more than God’s truth. Psalm 139:23-24 provides a template for testing our lives for any offensive ways.
Pray and ask the Father to reveal any areas of your life dominated by pride and ask for His forgiveness. List what He reveals in a notebook, then find Bible verses to help you overcome these prideful areas. As you pray and make a conscious effort to eradicate pride from your life, you will develop a deeper trust in God’s promises. A deeper trust leads to a closer relationship and a stronger faith in His love for you.
Prayer is a conversation with the Living God, yet His children often neglect it. When we pray, we get a sense of the heartbeat of God for the lost, our family, and our spiritual condition. When we do not have the words to pray, we can ask the Holy Spirit to pray for us.
God has provided all you need to grow through prayer. So, start today and spend some time in the presence of the Lord. It may seem awkward at first, but when you pray and feel His presence, your faith will become firmly established. The Christians who make prayer a part of their daily life will continue to grow in faith and trust as they see God move.
Talking to others about Christ is scary for many people, mainly because we think we do not have all the answers or we aren’t sure what words to use.
Pray and surrender yourself to be an instrument for telling others about His love. Confess your fears and ask the Lord to help you share the good news of Jesus Christ. God will open doors of opportunity for you to witness. You will find that God is faithful to give you words to speak, and the power of the Holy Spirit will touch the hearts of the people through you. Your measure of faith will increase as you walk under the influence of His love and power.
We have all been in a situation where we know we need to step out in faith, but we shrink back. How do we overcome those moments when fear rules over our faith? A long time ago, our Heavenly Father provided all we need through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus called Him our Helper in John 14:26, so the next time you find yourself in a situation where you want to shrink back, stop, and pray.
Ask for the Holy Spirit’s help to strengthen your faith to step out and do what God is calling you to do. When you complete your assignment, He has given you, your faith in Him will soar as He uses you to do great things.
Often, Christians long to have more faith even though they are not faithful with what they already have. One of the best ways to grow your faith is to be obedient to what you already know you should do but are not.
James 1:22 tells us to be doers of the Word of God. The first step toward a strong faith is to compile a list of what you already know you should be doing. For example, prayer and reading God’s Word should be a part of your daily life. If they are not, your next step would be to make time for each of these things. Be faithful with what you have, and you will grow with each step of obedience you take!
The lack of peace is an obstacle to building faith and trust in God. There are many times we are not sure what to do, and the lack of peace freezes our progress. Other times, we are not sure we know the will of God, and the lack of peace keeps us from doing anything.
In Isaiah 26:3, God promises to “keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” Here is the secret to your peace: trust in God . Pray for God’s guidance and trust that the Spirit of God will not allow you to take one step outside of His will for your life. If you take Him at His Word and trust what He says is true, His perfect peace will dominate your mind resulting in the growth you desire.
In Colossians 2:6-7, God instructed us to “walk in Christ Jesus the Lord.” Walking close to Him will give your faith the roots it needs to flourish.
Here are some practical ways for you to walk closely with the Lord Jesus. First, read about Him in God’s Word. Learning more about what He has done and said will naturally lead you to the next step. Worship Him, praising Him for His sacrifice and love. Then, follow His lead in all areas of your life, including the service of others. As you walk with Him, you will be strengthened in your faith.
These steps are not all-inclusive, but they certainly are a good start. God has gone to great lengths to make it possible for you to have a close relationship with Him, and faith and trust are crucial to that relationship. Let this list be your first step toward pleasing God.
Without faith, it is impossible to please God. However, the Bible tells us of many people who did please Him. The significance is that it is possible, so pray and seek the faith needed. O Lord, we ask this day for Your help and provision to live faithful and pleasing lives. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Author Bio
Natalie Regoli is a child of God, devoted wife, and mother of two boys. She has a Master's Degree in Law from The University of Texas. Natalie has been published in several national journals and has been practicing law for 18 years.