Where does faith play it's part?

Faith. It's one of the fruits of the spirit. It makes an easy catch phrase- have faith! Jesus talks about it over and over in the Bible. But I want to know, when does it actually step up and play it's part?? I want faith. I want an unwavering, undeniable faith. I want the peace that comes with faith. Is it something that grows with me as I mature? Or is it like an instinct that just kicks in at the right time? When does what I know become how I live? I have to believe that emotion and feeling were given to us for a reason, but I also believe that reasoning was given to us as well. So where is the balance, and can you live off one while denying the other?? Okay, well it's time for faith to make it's debut.

Faith to me has been an over-talked-about about subject among Christians who use the phrase so casually. Faith is not a small matter! To be honest, I mostly see it as an act of trying to believe everyday. I see it as something that I keep striving for. It's like if I keep saying it to myself, one day, it will just click. It's not my belief in God that is wavering, but my belief in how God is working. We are all different people, but God is the same. So where does that leave us? How do different, broken people approach a perfect, never-changing God?

I've wrestled with this for a while because I constantly run into friends and people who share my faith in God but have a different way of knowing him. Let me explain. It's like when you are shopping with a friend, and you suddenly realize that you don't have very similar tastes. You both like to shop, you both like to buy shoes, you both like to dress up, and yet neither of you shop at the same stores. Does this difference negate the fact that you two both enjoy shopping? Definitely not! Here's the best advice I ever received from a friend: The way that you love Jesus may not be the way I love Jesus. It makes a lot of sense for me because for a time I struggled with why I could not completely relate to the friends I was trying to study the Bible with. Just because our faith does not look the same, doesn't mean that we don't share the same love of God. The thing is that He is still God, and the way we love Him does not determine who He is.

So this brings me back to faith. Is it learned? or developed? or granted? Or maybe it's like that pair of pants that you buy hoping to fit into. You work out, eat right, and they fit! So you wear them and have fun and eat more and stop working out, then they don't fit again. But is faith such a roller coaster? I'm convinced that it can't be. I don't know how yet, but I'd like faith to take center stage.