Practical Steps on How To Have Faith

Having faith is the one thing a person must do to be saved (Ephesians 2:8-9) and remain righteous before God (Romans 3:28, Romans 4:1-8). As a consequence, it is important that you counter distractions and discouragements, and ensure that you perform this critical exercise regularly.

The following contains information on how you can have faith effectively, so that you may, among other things, counter discouragements you may have while trying to pursue it. (Remember, per Christ in Mark 11:22-24, having faith is the practice of: saying what you want and believing that it will happen, or asking God for what you want, and believing you will receive it.)

1) Do not worry about anything you may have done wrong, and God not listening to your request because of it. It is the act of having faith which causes God to consider you blameless (Romans 3:28), not any confession you may do. Confession is just a formality.

2) Be comfortable and relaxed while you are praying. Ultimately the only thing God cares about is that you pray by saying what you want and believing it will happen, or asking Him for what you want believing you will receive it. How ever you pray beyond this is incidental.

3) Say the words of your request using your lips either quietly or loudly, while believing what you say or ask for will come to bear. (If you are in a situation where this is not easy to do, or you would just plain rather not do so: you can alternately pray in your mind.)

4) If it seems difficult for you to believe that you will receive what you ask for, do not worry about it. Just do the best you can.

5) If it seems as if you cannot believe that you will receive what you ask for, do not worry about it. Continue praying. Per Mark 11:23, what matters is that you believe in your heart - not so much in your mind. This means that what matters is that you want to believe you will receive what you ask for. (Even if it seems as if you don't want to believe that you will receive what you ask for, or that you don't even want what you asking for, continue praying. Your overall behavior of asking, particularly in a persistent manner [see next step below], bears evidence of your true belief and want.)

6) Persist at asking God for what you want until you receive it. This may take several minutes or hours of praying, over the course of several days.

Please note: different things require different amounts of faith to see them realized. (This is suggested in Matthew 17:19-21 where Christ said to His disciples that their faith was too small for them to do the things they wanted to do, and they needed to increase their faith by doing a lot of praying.) Therefore to obtain something via faith that is relatively small, you may need to do only a fairly small amount of praying to generate the amount of faith needed to obtain it. However, as you pray for bigger things that require larger amounts of faith to see them realized, you may have to pray longer and longer, to generate the necessary faith needed to acquire them.

7) It is highly recommended that you pray by repeating one or more sentences containing your requests, and that you make this fundamental to your praying. This will make your prayers many, many more times effective, and will help ensure that you meet the minimum threshold for having faith, necessary to keep your relationship with God sound. E.g. you can repeat for several minutes in a prayer, the sentence, "Father, please let me find a new job." You can do this for several days until the thing you ask for comes to bear.

8) Please read here for how you can further maximize the effectiveness of your prayers.

9) While praying / having faith, do not rationalize whether you should have it. Just have it. Rationalizing whether you should have faith while having it, provides a foothold for doubt undermining your effort.

10) Please read here for very important information regarding praising God, or doing things other than saying what you want and believing that it will happen, or asking God for what you want, and believing you will receive it, while practicing having faith.

(This link provides information that forms the basis of some of the recommendations above.)

The above instructions provide a sound foundation for you to pray / have faith effectively. Remember, having faith is paramount to a Christian's life, and is the genesis of everything godly in him/her, including: righteousness (Romans 3:28); wisdom (Galatians 3:14, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, James 1:5-8); power (Mark 11:22-24, Mathew 17:19-21); and direction (Philippians 2:13). Therefore have faith, or pray as much as you are comfortable!