How to Strengthen Your Faith
Many sincere Christians reach a point where they recognize that their faith is not as strong, steady, or deeply rooted as they expected it to become. They believe in Jehovah, accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God, respect the Bible as the Spirit-inspired Word, pray, worship, and sincerely desire to live as Christians, yet their confidence may still weaken when fear, disappointment, temptation, unanswered questions, or personal failure enters their lives. At other times, faith appears strong during worship or Bible reading but becomes much less influential when an ordinary decision requires courage, self-control, forgiveness, honesty, endurance, or sacrifice. The important question, then, is not merely whether a person possesses faith, but whether that faith is becoming strong enough to govern the way he thinks, chooses, speaks, worships, and lives. Scripture never presents strong faith as an unexplained religious feeling that some Christians naturally possess while others simply lack it. Biblical faith has an objective foundation, develops through knowledge of what Jehovah has revealed, grows through repeated reliance upon that revelation, and becomes visible through obedient conduct. It can therefore be strengthened, not by manufacturing religious emotion or convincing ourselves to feel certain, but by bringing the mind and life increasingly under the authority of Jehovah’s written Word. This book begins with that practical conviction: stronger faith is built when accurate knowledge becomes settled confidence, settled confidence produces obedience, and obedient faith continues faithfully despite the pressures created by human imperfection, Satan, demons, and a wicked world.
That distinction is essential because the word faith has acquired meanings that Scripture does not give it. Faith is sometimes treated as optimism, intense desire, positive thinking, confidence in oneself, expectation that circumstances will improve, or the ability to believe strongly enough that a desired outcome will occur. Biblical faith is none of these things, because its strength depends not upon the intensity of the believer’s expectation but upon the truthfulness of the One in Whom he places confidence and the reliability of what He has revealed. Romans 10:17 connects faith with hearing the message concerning Christ, directing the believer away from self-generated certainty and toward revealed truth. Hebrews 11:1 likewise describes faith in connection with assured expectation and conviction regarding realities grounded in God’s promises, not whatever outcome a person happens to desire. Christian faith is therefore reasonable confidence in Jehovah based upon His character, His acts, His promises, His Spirit-inspired Word, and His saving arrangement through Jesus Christ. The historical ministry, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Christ stand at the center of that confidence, since Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:14–17 that Christian faith would be empty if Christ had not actually been raised. The stronger a Christian understands these objective foundations, the less vulnerable his faith becomes to the changing force of moods, circumstances, personal disappointment, or the persuasive claims of people who redefine faith according to human preference.
For this reason, strong faith must never be confused with constant emotional certainty. A Christian can feel afraid and still act in faith, feel discouraged and still obey, feel sorrow and still trust Jehovah’s resurrection promise, or experience uncertainty about a difficult question while continuing to examine the Scriptures carefully. Jesus experienced profound anguish before His death without becoming disloyal to His Father, and Paul endured opposition, imprisonment, physical suffering, uncertainty about immediate circumstances, and repeated pressure without concluding that Jehovah had become unreliable. Faith is revealed most clearly when a believer allows what Jehovah has said to govern him even while his emotions are pulling in another direction. A Christian who refuses dishonesty because Scripture condemns it is exercising faith even when he fears the financial consequences, just as one who rejects sexual immorality is exercising faith when obedience requires him to deny an immediate desire. A grieving Christian demonstrates faith when he continues trusting the biblical resurrection hope rather than allowing the pain of death to redefine what Scripture teaches about the human condition and the future. A discouraged believer exercises faith when he honestly acknowledges wrongdoing, repents, accepts Scriptural correction, and continues along the path of salvation instead of deciding that failure has made further obedience pointless. Strong faith is therefore not the absence of fear, sadness, unanswered questions, or emotional weakness; it is informed confidence that continues to place Jehovah’s revealed truth above the changing conclusions of the human heart.
This explains why the way a Christian reads the Bible has such a direct effect upon the strength of his faith. Scripture was not preserved merely to provide inspirational sentences that can be detached from their historical, grammatical, literary, and theological settings and applied according to whatever meaning feels personally helpful at the moment. Jesus said in John 17:17 that God’s Word is truth, which means the believer approaches Scripture as objective revelation whose meaning must be discovered rather than invented. The historical-grammatical method therefore matters greatly to spiritual growth because the Christian must seek what the inspired writer actually communicated through his words, grammar, context, historical setting, and literary form before deciding how that truth applies today. A reading strategy built only around completing a certain number of pages can produce familiarity without understanding, while serious reading asks what the passage means, how the author develops his argument, what surrounding verses contribute, and what response the truth requires. The Christian should learn to read broadly enough to understand the message of entire biblical books while also reading closely enough to notice important words, logical connections, commands, promises, warnings, explanations, and doctrinal relationships. He should become capable not only of recognizing familiar verses but also of explaining biblical truth accurately to his family, fellow Christians, interested unbelievers, and those who raise objections to the faith. Bible reading strengthens faith most deeply when Scripture becomes the believer’s established standard for evaluating ideas, correcting his reasoning, resisting sin, making decisions, explaining the Christian message, and directing everyday life.
Yet accurate Bible knowledge alone does not automatically produce mature faith, because truth must be allowed to expose what is actually taking place within the Christian’s thinking and conduct. Spiritual growth requires honesty, since a person can read Scripture, pray regularly, participate in Christian worship, defend biblical doctrine, and still resist the very correction that Jehovah’s Word brings to his life. Hebrews 4:12 describes God’s Word as capable of discerning thoughts and intentions, reminding believers that outward religious appearance cannot conceal inward motives from Jehovah. Genuine faith therefore permits Scripture to identify fear as fear, resentment as resentment, pride as pride, doubt as doubt, sinful conduct as sin, and self-deception as self-deception rather than hiding spiritual problems beneath respectable religious language. That honesty also affects the Christian’s understanding of his relationship with Jehovah, because acceptance with God cannot be built upon changing feelings of personal worthiness or an endless attempt to compensate for past wrongdoing through human performance. Romans 5:1 places peace with God upon justification by faith through Jesus Christ, while Ephesians 1:7 grounds forgiveness in Christ’s sacrificial blood rather than in the believer’s ability to make himself deserving. At the same time, recognizing the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice does not produce spiritual carelessness, because gratitude for Jehovah’s undeserved kindness should deepen repentance, obedience, worship, holiness, evangelism, and endurance. Christians grow stronger when they learn to look honestly at their imperfections without making those imperfections greater than Jehovah’s saving arrangement through His Son.
Pride presents another obstacle because it quietly shifts confidence away from Jehovah and toward the believer’s own judgment, ability, understanding, reputation, or desire for control. A person does not need to boast openly to become spiritually self-reliant, since pride can appear as resistance to correction, refusal to admit weakness, unwillingness to reconsider an opinion, defensiveness when Scripture exposes wrongdoing, or insistence upon understanding every circumstance before obeying. Proverbs 3:5–7 directly opposes that disposition by commanding wholehearted trust in Jehovah rather than dependence upon one’s own understanding or wisdom. Biblical surrender therefore does not require intellectual passivity, emotional numbness, abandonment of responsibility, or waiting for a mystical message from God. It means relinquishing the insistence that personal preference must have the final word and deliberately placing oneself beneath the authority of what Jehovah has already revealed in His Spirit-inspired Word. The humble Christian can admit that he was wrong, change direction, receive correction, learn from another believer, obey a command he initially finds difficult, and continue forward without needing to defend an image of spiritual superiority. This kind of surrender actually strengthens courage because confidence moves away from the unstable foundation of “I can handle everything myself” and rests instead upon Jehovah’s trustworthiness, the adequacy of Christ’s sacrifice, the reliability of Scripture, and the wisdom of obedience. Faith becomes stronger when the Christian no longer asks how Scripture can support what he has already decided but asks what Jehovah has said and what faithful submission to that truth requires.
The strengthening of faith also takes place through the ordinary structure of Christian life rather than through a succession of dramatic spiritual experiences. Regular contextual Bible reading, serious study, prayer, Christian association, evangelism, moral discipline, self-examination, repentance, and repeated obedience give biblical conviction opportunity to become established character. A Christian cannot simply command his mind to “believe harder,” but he can choose the practices that continually expose his mind to Jehovah’s truth and place his conduct under its authority. He can examine Scripture carefully, investigate questions rather than allowing them to accumulate, meditate on what is true, remember Jehovah’s acts, pray for wisdom and strength, associate with believers who encourage faithfulness, and reduce influences that repeatedly normalize unbelief or sinful conduct. He can also identify specific areas where his professed beliefs and actual conduct remain disconnected, whether those areas involve speech, sexuality, anger, forgiveness, money, family responsibility, employment, evangelism, entertainment, or personal discipline. None of these actions earns eternal life, since Romans 6:23 identifies eternal life as God’s gift through Jesus Christ, but living faith necessarily produces a continuing response to that gift. This is why Scripture can teach both justification by faith apart from works of law and the necessity of a faith that works through love, because Paul opposes confidence in meritorious works while James opposes an empty profession that produces no corresponding conduct. Salvation is consequently presented as a continuing path on which Christians remain dependent upon Jehovah’s grace through Christ while continuing in faith, repentance, obedience, and endurance toward the life He has promised.
This continuing character of faith becomes especially important when the Christian enters periods of severe difficulty. A foundation cannot be constructed effectively after every support has already begun collapsing, which is why Jesus’ illustration in Matthew 7:24–27 places the building of the foundation before the violent weather arrives. Christians strengthen themselves for future hardship through the quiet habits of present faithfulness: learning Scripture before confusion comes, practicing honesty before dishonesty becomes profitable, resisting smaller temptations before greater pressure develops, learning to pray before fear becomes overwhelming, and cultivating Christian companionship before discouragement produces isolation. Mature faith does not demand that Jehovah immediately remove every painful circumstance before the believer will continue worshiping and obeying Him. Habakkuk 3:17–18 portrays confidence in Jehovah while devastating material conditions remain unresolved, showing that worship need not depend upon prosperity or immediate relief. Likewise, Christian endurance is not grim confidence in human toughness but sustained reliance upon Jehovah’s promises while the believer keeps his attention fixed upon Jesus Christ, His sacrifice, His resurrection, His commands, His Kingdom, and the life God has promised through Him. Spiritual grit grows through thousands of faithful decisions in which Scripture repeatedly receives greater authority than weariness, temptation, social pressure, fear, frustration, or disappointment. The believer becomes increasingly resilient when setbacks lead him to repentance, correction, renewed discipline, and continued movement rather than to complacency on one side or despair on the other.
Strong faith must also be discerning faith because modern Christians encounter a vast and nearly continuous stream of religious claims that previous generations could never have received with comparable speed. A sermon, podcast, social-media post, bestselling book, personal testimony, motivational speaker, or popular religious teacher can use Christian vocabulary while attaching meanings to that vocabulary that the biblical writers never intended. Scripture never makes charisma, popularity, audience size, emotional impact, confidence, personal experience, or professional presentation a standard of spiritual truth. Acts 17:11 commends those who examined the Scriptures carefully to determine whether what they were hearing was accurate, establishing a pattern in which even persuasive teaching must submit to the written Word. Christians must therefore learn to distinguish biblical faith from positive thinking, biblical hope from promises of guaranteed earthly success, biblical spirituality from mystical impressions, biblical guidance from private revelation, and biblical love from the demand that truth and moral judgment be abandoned. They must also recognize that words such as faith, grace, salvation, spirit, love, judgment, gospel, Kingdom, repentance, righteousness, and truth receive their meaning from Scripture rather than from changing cultural preferences. A Christian who understands the Bible’s overall message is much more difficult to mislead because isolated verses cannot as easily be detached from creation, sin, redemption, Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection, discipleship, judgment, resurrection hope, and the promised Kingdom. Faith becomes increasingly stable when the believer is more impressed by accurate handling of Scripture than by personality, more concerned with context than presentation, and more interested in Jehovah’s truth than in having his existing preferences confirmed.
The chapters ahead are designed to move deliberately through these connected dimensions of Christian faith, beginning with the problem of faith that feels spiritually stuck and proceeding toward the development of a foundation capable of lasting endurance. The discussion will examine why objective truth must govern Bible reading, why faith cannot simply be created by force of will, why honesty is indispensable to spiritual growth, how a Christian can understand acceptance with God through Christ, and why pride must give way to humble dependence upon Jehovah. It will then address spiritual doubt, surrender, daily routines that build resilience, the relationship between justification and living works, and the kind of faith that continues obeying while difficult circumstances remain unresolved. Attention will also be given to the movement from believing biblical teachings to practicing them in ordinary life, because the real strength of faith appears when truth governs choices that no audience applauds and no other human may ever see. Consistent spiritual discipline will receive particular emphasis because Christian maturity cannot safely depend upon emotional highs, temporary enthusiasm, a memorable conference, an inspiring sermon, or one unusually powerful period of devotion. The final movement toward discernment is equally necessary because a faith painstakingly strengthened through Scripture should not then be surrendered to fashionable spiritual claims that have never been carefully examined against the inspired text. Throughout this process, the standard remains the same: what Jehovah has caused to be written must govern what Christians believe, and the meaning of those writings must be determined by responsible attention to their historical, grammatical, and contextual sense. The purpose is not to produce Christians who merely feel stronger but Christians whose faith has become better informed, more humble, more obedient, more discerning, more resilient, and more firmly centered upon Jehovah’s saving arrangement through Jesus Christ. The reader is therefore invited to approach each chapter not merely asking, “Do I agree with this?” but also, “What does Scripture establish as true, where does my present thinking or conduct fail to correspond with that truth, and what faithful response should follow?”
About the Author
EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 220+ books. In addition, Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).
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