Why Faith?
Updated: December 31, 2025
How is it that God — who wants the whole world to know the truth — is “invisible”? Why doesn’t He just show Himself so that everyone will believe? He is certainly capable of doing that, like an all-powerful Cop who suddenly chooses to live on your couch. This would effectively force everyone to conform to His holiness or die on the spot. Yet this doesn’t sound like freedom, does it? It is difficult to imagine real love without freedom, and then freedom without choice, and then choice without actual contrast between the choices. Genuine saving faith is a truly free and legal choice for every person. It cannot be obstructed by background, circumstances, physical disability, or other people, since it happens in the heart (the spirit, the real “you”).
Yet there is more to faith than mere choice. Faith is a powerful force with tangible effects in the physical realm. Jesus and the early disciples demonstrated this, as many of His disciples do even today. He said that a tiny amount of faith (released by words) can move a physical, literal mountain (Matthew 17:20), and he then says that with that same tiny bit of faith, “nothing will be impossible for you.”
Most Christians today are strangers to this kind of faith. In fact, many who call themselves “believers” have a hard time accepting the possibility of real mountain-moving, miracle-working faith. They will dismiss most reports of the miraculous as ignorant, mistaken, or fraudulent. They accept that such things happened early on in church history, but they maintain that we need no other revelation of God’s reality because we have the Bible. They reason that we would “see” a lot more miracles if it were really a significant part of God’s plan.
The Bible disagrees with them. Jesus Himself listed certain signs that would follow “believers,” and this included the casting out of demons, the speaking of unlearned languages (tongues), and the healing of the sick by touching them. All of these things are done by faith. Did Jesus indicate any expiration date on faith, or on the signs following those having faith? He certainly did not. Are the problems dealt with by Jesus and the early disciples no longer happening? Is the work of God finished in the earth? It certainly is not.
One can reason that if those signs follow believers, then the absence of those signs would follow unbelievers. In other words, no faith for miracles equals no miracles. The modern church is supposed to be at least as powerful as the early church! Yet in so many places, churches experience no tangible power. This turns people away from Jesus, because some people really need the power of God to break the curse of addiction, sickness, depression, and a host of other problems. All of these problems can be solved by faith.
Thankfully, unbelief is curable! Our faith can be as developed as our flesh, even more so. Why don’t we learn how to get and use our faith as Jesus and the early disciples did? The payoff is huge! (See also Why Ask? and Why Miracles?)
(Hebrews 11:32-35, Joshua 10:12-13, Genesis 1:3, Ephesians 5:1, Mark 11:21-25 YLT, Mark 16:17-18, John 4:48, John 14:12, Galatians 3:5, John 10:37 AMP, Psalms 27:13 NET, Mark 9:23, Matthew 17:20)