How to Know if You Have Faith
How do you know when you have faith? Is faith an emotion? Can you feel faith?
When I first began to receive understanding of spiritual things, I thought about faith a lot. If faith was the thing I needed, how do I get it and how do I operate in it?
Over the years, I have learned so much about how to receive things from God by faith and it is definitely working in my life.
Faith is a spiritual substance that comes from hearing the Word of God. When a person has faith, they can receive things from God that are not naturally possible. Faith takes hold of what you hope for and brings it into the realm of reality.
If you have received Jesus as your Lord and been born again, you have received the faith of God (Romans 12:3). This is how you know that you have faith. Faith has been given to you as a gift.
However, simply knowing that you have faith is not enough. You must learn how to use the faith God has given you!
The faith that God gives you is a supernatural faith. You received it by hearing God.
Faith from God believes with the heart instead of only believing with the natural senses (what you can see, touch, hear, smell and taste). This kind of faith is spiritual and comes only from hearing the Word of God.
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10:17
When you heard the Word of God concerning salvation for the first time, faith entered your heart. You then used that faith to receive what Jesus has done for you. You received the Word of God and it produced faith in your heart. The faith you needed to receive salvation was given to you as a gift. Isn’t God amazing? He even gives you the faith!
When I first heard from the Bible that God’s will was to heal me physically, faith came into my heart. The more I heard the Word regarding healing, the more my faith grew until my healing was brought into the realm of reality.
How Do You Describe Faith?
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
Faith is a substance. You receive faith from hearing the Word of God. Faith is the evidence of the reality of what you’re hoping for. Faith is your evidence.
When you hear the truth that God wants to meet all your needs and you choose to believe it, faith comes.
That faith is the evidence of that reality. Faith gives you the assurance that what you need has already been provided by a loving, good Father. Faith is how you see it become manifested in your life.
Faith stays the same regardless of what your physical senses are telling you. This is the good fight of faith.
If you remain in faith and operate according to the laws of faith, you will see what you are believing for.
The fight of faith occurs when your emotions are telling you the opposite of what you are believing. Remember, faith is not an emotion. It is a spiritual substance. Your emotions will be determined by what you are thinking about.
If you are thinking thoughts of faith and truth, trusting God, your emotions will be positive and joyful.
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Isaiah 26:3
Why Is Faith Important?
Faith is so important because it is the means by which we receive everything God has so lavishly done for us by His grace.
We see His precious promises become reality in our physical lives by using our faith. Everything we need has been given to us by His amazing grace. He left nothing undone. Faith is the means by which we receive it.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,. Ephesians 2:8
Everything comes by grace- through faith. That’s how you received salvation. That’s how you receive healing and finances and peace and joy, etc. etc. By grace through faith.
Receiving from God requires faith, but even that faith is given to us through His Word!
Over the years I have seen Christians depart from walking in Biblical faith. Usually they are offended at faith teachings and tragically reject the truths of how to walk by faith. In every circumstance, I see them begin to lose the battles of life that Jesus has already won for them. How can this be? Because they stopped receiving the victory by faith.
They stopped walking by faith and instead began focusing on their emotions and what they were experiencing with their physical senses.
For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Romans 8:6
To be carnally minded is just a mind that is focused on the natural- what we see, touch, taste, hear, and smell with our natural senses.
To be spiritually minded is a mind focused on the spiritual realities found in the Word of God. We can enjoy the beauty of the natural world around us while still maintaining a mindset that is focused on the Word of God.
If we reject the principles of faith, we reject God’s system of experiencing His goodness. He intends for us to live a life of faith, experiencing victory over the world.
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 1 John 5:4
Our faith is the victory that overcomes the world!
How to Know You’re In Faith
When you are operating in faith, you are resting in what Jesus has accomplished through his death and resurrection.
The peace and rest in your soul is a great indicator to whether you are in faith about the situation.
When you are walking and living by faith, there is a confident assurance in your soul. Although symptoms or negative emotions may arise, we reject those with the Word of God.
God has already given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue 2 Peter 1:3
A good way to know that you’re in faith about something is if you are aware of the fact that it’s already been given to you.
Faith is present tense. You have it now. If you are waiting for God to do something in the future, you are not in faith. Many people die waiting for God to do something that He’s already done.
IF YOU ARE WAITING FOR GOD TO DO SOMETHING IN THE FUTURE, YOU ARE NOT IN FAITH.
Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father. Why did He sit down? Because He was finished. The job was done. He accomplished everything we needed for life.
But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, Hebrews 10:12
Everything has been accomplished. Faith taps into what God has done and brings it into our physical reality.
What is Faith and Belief?
Belief and faith are closely related, but not the same.
Belief is a choice- you chose as an act of your will whether or not to believe something. When you choose to believe the Word of God, faith comes from the Word as you hear it. Faith will grow stronger, like a muscle when it is exercised and fed. Faith is steadfast. It stays the same regardless of the situation.
Is Belief an Emotion?
Belief is not an emotion, but it can affect your emotions. For example, if someone called and told you that one of your loved ones had passed away, and you believed it, your emotions would immediately change to grief and sadness. You would experience these emotions whether or not what the caller said was true or not based on the fact that you believed it.
This is why what we choose to believe is so important. What we believe in our hearts determines how we live.
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Proverbs 23:7
Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23
If you choose to believe the truths of God’s Word and keep your thoughts focused on truth, you will generally have positive emotions. Emotions are a result of what you believe and think on. Belief is a choice, not an emotion.
What is the Difference Between Faith and Religion?
People use the terms ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ interchangeably, but they are not at all the same. Religion is man’s attempt to reach God by their moral conduct and religious traditions.
Faith is believing what God has already done on our behalf. Many religious people would tell you that they live a life of faith, but they don’t actually believe what the Bible says. They are deceiving themselves.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. James 1:22
To be a doer of the Word is to believe the Word to such a degree that you live in accordance with what it says. For example, if we know the Word tells us that we are blessed and yet we live life talking about how we are cursed and bad things always happen to us, we are not being doers of the Word, we are hearers only, deceiving ourselves.
How can you tell what someone believes? By their actions and their words. Somebody can tell you all day long that they believe the Bible, but their actions and idle words tell you otherwise.
What’s really in a person’s heart will eventually come out of their mouth. For example, someone may tell you that they believe the Bible when it says “by His stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24), but at the same time they are making arrangements and provisions to be sick. They don’t really believe.
Living by Faith
When we learn how to live by faith, we begin to experience everything God has done for us.
We begin to see the realities of Jesus’s victory displayed in our lives.
Faith is not hard, it is simply resting in what Jesus has already done. It is a life of rest and victory!
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith” Romans 1:16-17