Faith is constituted of several vital substances. First, faith is connected to God’s grace bestowed upon mankind through Christ (John 1:14; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Titus 3:5). That’s the very starting point of faith. When we’re exercising faith in God, we have to believe that whatever we need from Him had already been fulfilled through His Son Christ Jesus through grace.

If we were to use that simple analogy, grace is the male and faith is the female. Therefore, when there’s an encounter of both of them, it produces a powerful outcome such as salvation, transformation, favor, acceptance, protection, blessings, and so forth. Within faith, we find three major elements, which are trust, obedience, and patience. They are all intertwined; in order words, they are the intrinsic mechanism of faith. We’ll go over them briefly individually.

1) Trust

Faith and trust are pretty much the same things to a vast extent because to trust God is to have faith in Him on the ground of His Word in connection to whom He is, and how He operates revealed to us. One thing that truly stands out about trust is that it’s connected directly to a person’s character or integrity.

So God wants us to honor whom He is, and one of the ideal ways we can honor Him is through trusting Him alone. With that being said, we cannot honor God while living a life marked by constant unbelief, which irritates God since that amounts to taking His absolute and uncompromised character to such a low level, that in no way fit whom He is (Numbers 14:11). There’s going to be a reason as to why a person may choose not to trust God regarding a particular issue, so whatever the reason may be, it gets to occupy the place that God should have occupied in that person’s life.

A life that isn’t based on trusting God is a very humanistic one which is totally unacceptable before God. Moreover, it’s a life that will ultimately lead to misery, confusion, fear, panic, and so forth. The only way we can successfully and victoriously live the Christian life is to let Christ impute His strength and power to us through the means of allowing Him to work through us by trusting Him to face whatever issue we’re struggling with. 

2) Obedience

When it comes down to obedience, it’s the very substance upon which our faith in God is established. Moreover, obedience is the propeller that moves faith forward. Faith compels us to act out through the means of obedience; therefore, obedience must always succeed faith. In fact, obedience is what validates and activates our faith in God. 

This means that if you ever claim to have faith in God, you must be willing to do whatever God has commanded you to do whether it makes sense to you logically or not. Having faith in God is to believe that whatever He has called you to do, He has already made provision in order to make that become a reality. You may not understand how in the world it’s going to happen; nevertheless, all you really have to do is to step into His calling obediently.

Having faith in God is to be willing to take action even if there hasn’t been yet a trajectory set before you by God. If God were to reveal the entire picture of something; in other words, if you can see the whole thing as well as the exact path that you’ll have to take in order to get there, then it’s no longer faith. As a result, there’s no need to actually seek Him and to rely on Him for guidance.

Lastly, obeying God isn’t just about following a specific instruction that He’s given you about achieving something but being willing to live a life pleasing to God, regardless of the cost (Romans 12:1; Ephesians 5:8-10; Colossians 1:10). Living a life pleasing to Him by ceasing to please self is the core foundation of glorifying Him.

3) Patience

We can never underestimate the importance of patience itself due to the fact that patience plays such a critical role concerning exercising faith in God in the sense of enabling us to wait upon His perfect timing (Isaiah 40:31; Psalm 27:14). By the way, God doesn’t answer prayers the way we would want Him to do so. In many cases, as we’re desperately asking Him to do something for us, He’s working on something else.

It may well be something powerful, deep, and life-changing He’s trying to teach us. The urgency of any situation we’re dealing with isn’t truly what matter, regardless of how desperate we feel. Waiting upon God is to believe that He knows better than we do; thereby, He’ll always do the right thing at the right time. Keep in mind that God operates on the basis of His perfect will and divine timing. 

Conclusion

God isn’t that convinced by just words because action speaks louder than words. The way that God operates, He tends to need us to come out of our comfort zone. The reason is that being in our comfort zone is to be willing to do what we think is the right thing to do or to limit ourselves based on how we conceive reality; however, coming out of our comfort zone is to be challenged by God to do the very things we would have never been willing to do.

Our words must be backed up by a genuine willingness to act out on what we believe in. Meaning that we have to be deliberate regarding exercising faith in God. Lastly, God will measure your faith through the means of your obedience, patience, along with your constant willingness to trust Him no matter how bad the circumstances are.