Weathered Faith

It is ok to struggle with your faith in God. Weathered faith that has been blown and kicked, about will stand in trials. Unlike faith that has never been shattered, never been tested.
We know what a test means. To see how strong it is, if it is at all. To know its ability, to know its limits.
If you come out of the faith struggle with your faith in God still intact you are the better for it.

What is faith?
Faith is the substance of things unseen.¹ Basically, its believing something that will happen even though it hasn’t happened yet. Or beleiving something about somebody even if they haven’t proven it yet.

But, having faith isn’t the only way to keep the faith. That would be somehow contradictory, if the only way to keep having faith is to have faith in faith. Will has a part in it to. The will to do something.
The line between right and wrong, foolish and wise is actually a lot thinner than some of us realize. That’s why I’m glad there is a sovereign God that can tell me what in the world to do! What is the right thing to do may seem wrong in every way. Or someone could be innocent and look really guilty.
We all have the will to believe what we want to believe and we have exercised this will before. It determines whether or not we succeed in a lot of things.
Have the will to keep the faith even though you are looking for its credibility.
You don’t need faith just for God though. You need it for other people and yourself.
But specifically with God, have the will to believe he will come through and reassure your faith. You may not know how and where but have the will to keep believing this basic principle.

It is important what you have faith about. If you have faith that God will strike someone dead then you might want to look over the character of God and see if that falls in line. My favorite faith target, the one I want to have faith in all the time is, God is who he said he was and I am who He said I am.
To explain, God is love, God is just. I am loved and I’m loved by Him very berry much!

Going further in the application of this, if no time stamp was given on the object of faith like, “You will be healed of this foot disease,” or, “I’ll show you why you should believe that Jesus rose from the dead.” Then we can’t go and place a time stamp on it. This is what I’ve heard a couple of times, “I’ve been having faith and it hasn’t yet, maybe it was all for nothing.”
You can’t just decide three months into it that you’ve waited long enough when you were never told when your faith would be fulfilled, just that it would be.
You were never told when you would be proven correct or innocent, but that it would be proven.

This brings up again what we have faith for. Sometimes it helps to just be down-to-earth. For example, we don’t always just want to be proved correct, but we want to be proved correct in front of an audience. You don’t just want your brother to come home from the war, you want him to come and have a good time with you. I don’t know why we don’t put all of this into words and just say instead, “I want my brother to come home.” We aren’t in such a desperate situation where we are snatching at any and every solution. We have God on our side. Big, almighty, God. And we can be his sons and daughters and ask for the world. So ask, “They really built up a strong case against you God, show me how they are wrong before I see them again, and let me defend my faith.”

P.S. Make sure you are prepared to listen to God!