Things That Last

Things That Last

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

IF YOU’VE SPENT MUCH TIME trying to muster up faith, you know how difficult it can be. It’s like trying to will your garden to grow, watching and waiting for the first buds to emerge, wishing you could make them magically appear. But faith doesn’t work that way. Sure, you can cultivate it by clearing away weeds and thorns—those doubts and fears that war against your confidence in the Father’s goodness. And you can provide the right environment by surrounding yourself with worship, Scripture, and confident words of prayer (preferably out loud, since your mind responds to the sound of your own voice quite well). But most of all, you need to feed your faith for it to grow strong.

As we’ve seen, the most important food for your faith is love. Your loving relationship with the Father, in which you receive his love and become secure in it, and in which you express your love to him through praise and gratitude, is foundational. Knowing this love in your heart of hearts stirs up hope (not wishful thinking but confident expectation), and hope is essential for faith. But this love doesn’t just fill up your spiritual reservoir; it overflows into the lives of others (1 John 4:19). It creates a climate in which the goodness of the Father is increasingly evident. A loving environment shared with others makes his presence tangible. It makes the soil of your faith rich with nutrients that will help it grow.

God’s love for us and our love for him and others fuel our faith in remarkable ways. When we become saturated in the love of God, we are enabled to trust his goodness fully and be at rest in his purposes for us. That empowers faith in God’s purposes for us. Then, being saturated in his love, we are free to love others and overflow with compassion for them. That empowers our faith in his purposes for them. We more strongly believe he will accomplish his will because our compassion insists that he must. Faith, hope, and love work together to bring his Kingdom into our lives and the world around us.

Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.