Have you ever wondered if you have enough faith? If you are like most of us, probably so. Well I’ve got good news! If you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you already have world overcoming faith! The key is knowing what you have and then learning how to release it. That’s what this article is all about.
Romans 12:3 says God has given us the measure of faith! The minute you asked Jesus into your life, God gave you faith as part as your new spiritual make-up. And notice, he gave you the measure. He gives us all the same measure of faith. Let me illustrate. My wife, Ashley, and I just finished having soup for lunch. She used the same ladle to serve soup into her bowl as my bowl. We got the same amount of soup because the ladle measured a specific amount. It was the measure. When you and I got born again, Jesus gave us the measure of faith. This means we all have the same amount of faith and that faith is more than enough to handle any situation that comes our way!
Just because you have the measure of faith doesn’t mean you know how to use it properly, however. For example, I could have the same measure of soup as Ashley, but if I pour my bowl on my head then I won’t get the same impact as she would if she eats her soup. This is the problem with many Christians about knowing how to use their faith. They have the same measure as Joseph Prince or Kenneth Copeland, but they don’t know what to do with their measure so they don’t receive the benefits.
Look at Colossians 2:6-7:
6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
We receive Christ Jesus the Lord by putting faith in His grace. Paul then tells us to establish in this faith and abound in it with thanksgiving. I want to focus the rest of this article on the concept of abounding in faith. The Greek word for abound is perisseúō. It comes from a word that means to superabound (in quantity or quality), be in excess, or be superfluous. The idea is to superabound or having an excessive faith! Would you want that? I sure do!
The way Paul tells us to abound in faith to that level is through thanksgiving. Why? Is it because God gives us more faith when we are thankful? No! You already have all the faith you are going to have. You have the measure. The reason we abound in faith when we are thankful is we have to push past the sense realm of what we can see, taste, smell, touch, and feel in order to be thankful. Think about it, in the natural there is always a reason to be unthankful. We get bad doctor’s reports, bad financial reports, kids who get bad report cards, and we see politicians we voted for do all sorts of crazy things. If we aren’t intentional, we’ll focus on sense knowledge and have a tendency to be negative. This will keep us from abounding in faith!
In order to abound in faith, we have to focus on the scripture and promises that God has made to us and declare them as true before we ever see the breakthrough. This is very hard to do at first because our flesh screams, “This is crazy. The promises aren’t working!” Once you press beyond the realm of the flesh and decide to be thankful and worship anyway, you access the spirit realm and begin to abound in the faith you already have.
This isn’t just theory to me. I’ve had to do this hundreds of times over the years and it works. I can give testimony after testimony of times where Ashley and I chose to be thankful in the midst of bad news and then our hearts eventually overflowed with faith and we overcame the negative situation!
I want to encourage you to make a choice to be a thankful person! It doesn’t happen by accident! It take intentionality. If you do, don’t be surprised when you begin to abound in faith! I hope this article has encourage you. If you’d like to learn more, check out this message I taught at Grace Life Church.
