Where Does Faith Come From?

Next week is Thanksgiving and most of us will pile in the car and drive to visit family. One of the things my husband and I do to pass the time when we're on trips is to play "name that group". He has XM Satellite Radio in his truck and we'll put it on the 80s music channel. The game goes like this: listen to the first few notes of the song and name the group. If you're really good, blurt out the year the song was released. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I'm the reigning queen of this game! We'll talk about what we were doing or where we were when that song was popular. Since there are a few years' difference between us it can be fun to reminisce.

One of my favorite people in the Bible is David---the young David. When David was getting ready to face Goliath, he remembered how God had helped him in the past. I Samuel 17:46 says, "This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand."

When David saw this giant man standing in front of him, he had to encourage himself because nobody else was offering him positive reinforcement. His brothers told him he was crazy; King Saul thought David was too small to defeat Goliath. But David remembered the lion and the bear God had helped him kill before. No doubt David had tremendous faith. But what gave him that faith? David's past experience with God! David would not have had any faith to convince him God would help him slay Goliath if David had not remembered how God had pulled through for him in the past.

Each of us has to have our own experience with God. I can't live on your experience and you can't live on my experience. We can encourage each other in the faith and share how God has helped us, but each one of us must go through our own trials. And just as David probably thought back to how God had brought him through before, isn't it good to remember God's faithfulness and that He has never taken His hand off us? That's where faith comes from!