Have you ever heard anyone say, "I wish I had more faith?" I have on more than one occasion. I suppose that all of us who recognize the importance of faith have wished for more at one time or another. Is it possible to have more faith? It would be terribly discouraging if the answer to that were "No!" Actually, all of us could have and really should have more (2 Thessalonians 1:3)...but how?

D.L. Moody said that he had prayed for faith thinking that one day faith would come and strike him like lightening, but it didn’t happen. Then one day Moody picked up his Bible and read, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Romans 10:17). He began to study his Bible and, in his words, "Faith has been growing ever since."

One day when I had already been a Believer for about twenty years, I was asked to teach an adult Bible class in the little local assembly I was attending. I accepted, but only if I be allowed to do two things; to pick the subject of study, and to do away with the Sunday School quarterly. Over the years, quarterlies had proved to be crutches to which lazy teachers resorted for a fifteen minute cramming session at bedtime on Saturday night or, worse yet, before racing to church on Sunday morning. Quarterlies suffered a well deserved fate...incarceration in bureau drawers until the day of their final exile to the garbage can. Their crime, as I saw it, was boring people to death. If we are going to teach the Bible, let’s teach the Bible. The part of the Bible I had decided to teach was Paul’s Epistle to the Church of Rome. For years I had heard preachers extol the glories of the Roman letter. "If the entire Bible were solid gold," they said, "the Book of Romans would be a diamond." I remembered hearing how this epistle had converted the "greats" of Church History to Christ, and inspired the truly genuine revivals of the past.

The problem was that I knew nothing about Romans. How can one teach a book that one knows nothing about, especially one who has just thrown away his crutch? The truth was, I knew nothing about any of the Pauline Epistles. I had been to Bible school and college and had "preached" in dozens of churches. I had taught Sunday School classes on and off for twenty years and still hardly knew the writings of Paul from a telephone book. Like so many believers and all too many preachers, I had spent my time in the Gospels and almost everywhere else. Jesus I knew, and the Twelve I knew, but who was Paul? Were not his letters just source books for proof-texts?

I had to do something fast! I would be teaching an adult class for the first time in my life for a whole quarter, and without any crutches! I decided to read Romans fifty times before the first Sunday of the new quarter. This I accomplished by giving up my lunch hours and my lunches. When I finished I didn’t know any more than when I began. Something definitely was wrong! Fortunately, I figured it out. I had been reading the book, not studying it. And so, for the first time in my life I began to do what I should have been doing from the first day of my salvation...seriously studying what God has to say to me.

I discovered many keys to Bible understanding as a result of giving up Bible reading in favor of Bible study: the uniqueness of Paul’s apostleship...he’s not one of the Twelve; the difference between Law and Grace; the distinction between Israel’s program and God’s program for the Body of Christ; total forgiveness as opposed to "short accounts;" the contrast between the righteousness of man in which I cannot stand before God and the righteousness of God in which I cannot but stand; the fact that the Grace Believer has been raised with Christ from the tomb to the throne; that the Body of Christ could not have begun on the Day of Pentecost; that we are not under the "great commission," but under a greater one, and many others, including the thirty-six irreversible things that the Son of God accomplished for every Believer through His crosswork on Calvary.

Faith does not exist in percentages. Faith does not go from a 10% faith to a 33% faith to a 67% faith to, if we’re lucky, a 98% faith. One believes God 100% or not at all! To grow in faith is to learn more of what God says in His Word.. .to have more reasons to believe Him.

Yes, Mr. Moody, when we open the Bible and let it be the only Vicar of Christ on earth, faith will grow...and grow, and grow, and grow!

"But grow in Grace even in the
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To Him be glory both now and to the day of Eternity"
(2 Peter 3:18)