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Growing

             We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. (II Thessalonians 1:3)

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. (Romans 10:17)

There’s an old saying, “Don’t pray for patience.” If you ask for patience, you probably won’t get patience magically handed to you. You’ll get struggles that give you the opportunity to grow patient. Praying for any virtue or against any vice will probably get a similar outcome – not the virtue, not freedom from the vice, but the need or opportunity to develop both the virtue and the freedom.

  If we are to be commended, as Paul does the Thessalonian church, for the growth of our faith and the increasing of our love, how are we to grow our faith and increase our love? The second verse above gives us a hint on part of the answer. We grow in faith by hearing the word about Christ, reading the word about Christ, and I submit by witnessing the word about Christ as it influences and changes others. In other words, faith doesn’t come from feelings or from “I think I can. I think I can.” Neither does love.

According to Dallas Willard, a great deal of what we need to learn can’t be learned directly. You don’t sign up for Love or Faith 101. But, like plants, if we are put in the right “soil” with the right light and moisture, we’re likely to produce the fruit of love or faith.

Another idea that comes to mind is to consider the behaviors we associate with love and faith and practice the behaviors. These may differ from person to person. If you love someone, what does it look like? If you have faith in someone,  what does it look like? What would happen if we started treating other people the way we want to be treated? Or started being acting with their well-being in mind?

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