Your life will shrink or expand in proportion to your faith

The world is built by those who exercise their faith and are willing to face their darkest hours with courage, those who take setbacks without losing hope.

The most effective way to grow faith is to use it—to test your limits, to pursue aspirations so ambitious that they are destined to fail without divine intervention—and then watch God exceed your expectations.

I often encourage my friends and those I meet to pursue goals so great that failure is inevitable without God’s hand. It’s truly remarkable how much God can accomplish if you simply choose to believe.

What is faith?

The Oxford Dictionary defines faith as “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.”

While this definition is broad, I want to focus on faith in the divine. Placing your trust in people can often lead to disappointment, but faith in God, faith in the universe—the supreme, unfailing being—never fails.

Martin Luther King Jr. beautifully described faith as “a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake their life on it a thousand times over. This knowledge of and confidence in God’s grace makes people glad, bold, and joyful in their dealings with God and others.”

Faith in God is not only transformative but also profoundly rewarding. Imagine your most cherished dreams materializing before your eyes: a loving family, a career you are passionate about, and a fulfilling life. All this and more is within reach when you place your trust in God.

Doubt sees the obstacles, faith sees the way.

Doubt sees the darkest night, faith sees the brightest day.

Doubt dreads to take a step, faith soars on high.

Doubt questions who believes, faith answers “I do.”

Faith and Challenges

Faith doesn’t eliminate challenges; rather, it equips you to navigate them with courage and hope.

During life’s darkest moments, faith provides the strength to envision a brighter outcome and believe it into existence. Albert Einstein once said, “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”

Faith empowers you to look beyond immediate circumstances and trust in the unseen.

Consider this: Only faith allows you to reject a dire medical diagnosis, defy poor academic results, or overcome any negative situation by holding onto the truth you believe in your heart.

Faith creates an inner peace that shields you from negativity, enabling you to focus on the extraordinary possibilities ahead.

It gets you to a point where your wildest dreams do come true. Not primarily because you are extraordinary or special, which of course you are, but because you chose to have faith and believe in God’s extravagant goodness to bless you.

The Nature of Faith

Smith Wigglesworth aptly stated, “Great faith is the product of great fights, great testimonies are the outcome of great tests, and great triumph is the result of great trials.”

Faith is like a flashlight; no matter how dark life gets, it lights your path forward— maybe not instantly, but inevitably.

As John Mason once wrote, “Regret looks back, worry looks around, but faith looks up.”

Sometimes, the best course of action is to stop overthinking, just breathe, and trust that everything will work out for the best.

Faith necessitates that you prepare for what you pray for, believing wholeheartedly that God will provide.

Ask, Believe, Expect, Receive

I have heard people say, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And I honestly think that is the worst advice ever when it comes to asking and believing.

How can you receive what you aren’t ready for?

Prepare to receive because sometimes the delay in your desires’ manifestation, is your preparation.

The simple formula behind faith is ask, believe, expect and receive. And I will get back to it in a moment.

At the end of the day people who hope for the best and prepare for the worst are certainly glad they did because for some reason they usually end up on the worse side. What they don’t know is that they caused their misfortune as they attracted the worst to themselves.

Having complete faith in God is hoping for the best and preparing for the best. Because you know in your heart that your God will not desert you.

Believing in God is taking all your cards and staking them all on God and then praying for him to come through.

Having faith in God is trusting him wholly, like you’re very life depends on it.

Paul in his letter to James confirmed, “Faith without actions is dead. Faith is action – never just a passive attitude.“

What you believe in is what will work for you.

At the time of this writing, the world is estimated to have over 1000 distinct religions. All have different spiritualities and beliefs. Each believer knows there is a supreme, very powerful controlling force, or call it God, Allah, Buddha, Infinite intelligence, the Universe etc. And this controlling power is able to give them all they ever desire, anything and everything they wish for.

I have come to realize that life can be somewhat meaningless unless one believes there is a controlling power bigger, and more powerful than themselves.

Whatever and whoever you believe in is what will work for you. Be it the stars, moon, galaxy, Lord Krishna, God, Allah, the Universe, it will work for you.

All you need to do is believe.

Each of the above mentioned forces has rules and laws, once you follow them, you are always sure to get what you want. As long as you act in accordance with the universal laws not against them.

Let me give you a small example here, for example if it is God that you believe in, your request can’t be something like God please give me that man’s wife and you expect it to come true. Because adultery is one of the things God hates. He would never give you something that disgusts him, something not after his own heart but your selfish desires.

And if it’s the universe you’re believing to work for you, you should probably check out these universal laws here and make sure to be in agreement with them.

How to increase your faith

The best way to grow and increase your faith is by using it.

Each time you believe in God or the Universe for something and it comes to pass, your faith will be greatly strengthened.

Here’s a simple formula that I highly recommend to get you well on your way.

Ask, Believe, Expect, Receive.

• Asking involves making a specific and straight forward request to GOD (Or whoever it is you believe in). You can as well write it down and put it somewhere you can always see it, just so that every time you see it, you feel grateful in your heart as though you have received it.
• Now if your new to the topic of asking you might be wondering why you should ask when your Father up in heaven knows everything you need.

Let me let you in on something today and I hope you remember it all your life. God favors those who ask.

He sure knows what we want but he wants us to sincerely ask him for it and he will grant it.

It’s true that some blessings come to us automatically but blessings come in halves.

There are blessings we must ask for. In the book of James 4:2, James said,” You don’t have because you don’t ask.”

In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks finds and to him who knocks the door will be opened.”

If there’s something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask !
~W.C Stone

Jim Rohn continued, “Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.”

For more about asking please check out my weekly podcast on asking here.

• Believe: “If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you can’t, most assuredly you won’t.
• Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.” – Denis Waitley.

After asking, the next part is believing.

Believing involves surrendering your works, plans and everything into his(God’s)able arms and trusting him with no doubt in your heart to give you the best desired outcome. Faith roughly looks something like that.

You must first be a believer if you want to be an achiever.

John Mason (In his book The impossible is possible)

Believing will keep your mind hopeful despite all the reasons it won’t work and also keep you going when others tell you it can’t be done. Faith hangs onto the one reason it will work out.

Be single minded, not double minded or triple minded, and this will give you a reason to keep going when times get tough.

Athough sometimes the answers to our prayers may not come in the ways we expect, we shall always receive the answers. And when the answer is a NO, it’s not a bad thing, either you deserve better or a YES would have done you more harm than good.

I am someone who God has been extravagantly good to, and yes he gives me Nos at times. And at times I just won’t take a NO and keep praying until He turns it into a YES.

There is this one time I was praying to work in one of Uganda’s leading Hotels as a hostess.(A job help pay the bills). I had worked at some small place during the covid lockdown and I thought getting work at that hotel would be one a dream come true, something like hitting the jackpot.

Eight hours of work, better money in the bank, some spare time to do what I like and honestly I couldn’t think of anything else I really desired more at that time.

At my current job, the conditions were fair but on most weekends we worked up to 12 to 16 hours, it was getting very hectic for me. But the money was coming in just fine, I had no life away from work.

So I applied to that hotel and they did not get back to me in two months. (I figured later that this was God giving me a No, saying I deserved better. But how could I ever accept that a five star hotel employment wasn’t my portion)

Since I wanted this so bad , I decided to push for it a little more. I went over to the Human Resource Manager’s office and asked him why he hadn’t gotten back to me? Did I not qualify to work for them or did they have no vacancies? He said they did have vacancies and told me to change my hair to black(It was maroon at the time) buy a few black skirts and white long armed shirts. And once I was done, I could report for work.

You can’t believe how excited I was, infact I was beyond thrilled. I was ecstatic. Just the thought of getting to attend to the Country’s elite, the Top 1%, I was so grateful for the opportunity.

To cut the long story short, I get there, the pay was good, but I never settle for just good, the salary they were giving, I would make it in tips in three to five good days days at my former work place. They had a great meals for staff (But I figured I did not come here to eat food but to make money). The clients or guests as they were called there were very few compared to what I expected, work was very boring, the tips were almost non existent, I just had to RUN for my life.

I worked there for one week, fell sick(fell into depression because I was disappointed) the second week and resumed for two weeks, all this time I was trying to tell myself that maybe God put me here to teach me tolerance. But I honestly couldn’t do it anymore. I worked there only three weeks and left, I made more losses than gains financially during my time there.

I have had many other experiences like this and from that time , I learnt to accept God’s NOs as meaning I deserve better, or something better is on the way.

Today when I pray to God and if it happens that’s great, if he says NO, I say thank you Lord, let your will be done in my life.

Life has taught me to have complete trust that God’s will for my life is ALWAYS BETTER than what I think is the best for me. And that has let me have complete unwavering faith in him.

Faith in God means having him as your number one plan, and your only plan. You might be wondering and what happens when things don’t go like you expect? Here’s your answer, God will provide you will plan B, He will show you what way to take.

Simply stand on His promises, keep calm, keep the faith and your sure to win.

• Moving on to the next part in our formula , EXPECT.

Don’t just wish for something, prepare to receive it right now. Please don’t bring doom on yourself by expecting the best and preparing for the worst as I guarantee, you are sure to receive what your expecting – failure.

A great way to expect is to be and feel happy like what you want has already manifested. It’s like when you at a restaurant and you order a meal, you sure do know it’s coming, you may not be able to place your hand on the minute or exact time it will arrive but you sure do know one thing, it is coming. Same thing here. You need to act, speak, think, like what you want has already manifested.

Visualization creates powerful thoughts and feelings of having whatever you want now. The universe will then return what you pictured in your mind, as your life. (You can use the aid of a vision board, writing down your desires and so many other ways.)

With faith you begin to see things that aren’t as thou they were.

And one more thing, you will never know how long you really have to wait. You have got to be expectant, everything has a different gestation period. And at times results may hurry or delay depending on many factors like how positive and happy you are and your actions too. Don’t ask for a successful career and then report to work late, do half-baked work and not give your work your best and expect to become successful at it. Your actions need to be in agreement with your requests.

Above all remember the universe is under obligation to give you want you expect. ALWAYS . All you have to do is prove yourself worthy – be expectantly grateful.

And one more thing, expect more from yourself, and the Universe than other people because you can control your life but you can’t control other people’s lives and how they choose to treat you.

• And here comes the best part, a message from the universe, ” Your order has been served.”
• Your wish has come true.
• Receive what you asked for with a grateful heart.

Receiving is always such a great joy, be happy and don’t forget to be grateful to the Universe.

Few takeaways on faith.

• Faith courageously steps into the unknown with eyes closed to all negatives. It takes much greater faith, declarations, confessions to walk out of your convictions and begin to see results rather than stop at dreaming.

• Real faith is absolutely reckless. No plan Bs, no what ifs, no How? The “How” is not your part to figure out , it is the Universe’s part, God’s or Allah’s or whoever it is your believing in.

This type of faith will make you look feeble, unreasonable in the eyes of the ” WORLD” AND SOMETIMES in your own eyes too, but yes that is how daring it is meant to be.

You attempting something so big that on your own it’s impossible, and God falls into the equation and makes it possible. And when this happens, your faith is greatly increased.

• Faith tries again the a hundredth time like it was just the first attempt. And faith comes alive most when we are confused about what is next and we choose to create it and believe it.

And if you wanna be a David, be ready to face a Goliath.