I'm sure many, if not all, of us have heard someone say something along the lines of 'I wish I had your faith'. It's kind of what my mum says - she says she believes in God, but just isn't as 'into it' as I am. In other words, 'I haven't got your faith'.
What do you say to someone who says this? Someone who apparently wants faith, but can't find it?
What does the Bible say about faith, and what it means? Is faith a commodity - something that you either possess or you don't?
The problem with statements like this is that it looks at faith as an object in itself, where in reality faith is not the object. In reality, we all have faith in something, but it is the object of that faith that matters.
We all put our faith in something, or even lots of things - whether it is the chair that we are sitting on, or the car that we drive.
The object of the Christian faith is God himself. We put our faith, or trust, in him to save us, to guide us, in his laws as the right way for us to live. The way we put our faith in these things is not by drumming enough feeling that they are true (which is probably what most people consider faith to mean), but by letting them dictate the way we look at the world and the way that we live our lives.
Similarly, to not be a Christian requires faith. It requires faith to believe that the revelation of God in Christ and in the Bible is not true. To not believe these things means to put your trust in an existence without God, and you let your life be influenced by other objects that you trust.
Ultimately of course, only through God revealing the truth to us can we have this shift in mindset. Having had it revealed, we must place our faith (trust) in the revealed God, not some god of our own making... thankfully, this is irresistable!
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