Building Faith

The following excerpt is from my Henry Blackaby devotional for September 20:
"Times that deeply challenge your faith will inevitably occur in your life. Eventually a situation will require you to trust God to a greater degree than you have ever had to trust Him before. Don't be shaken. Keep your eyes steadfastly on Jesus. He can see you through the storm. And, when He does, you will have grown to trust Him at a deeper level of faith than you ever have before."

I've really had a struggle with the issue of faith, thinking I haven't had enough or it's not strong enough. I guess I was thinking it was up to me to make it what God wants it to be. But with every challenging situation he has allowed in my life (and I'm not just talking my health here), He has been building my faith. As I look back I can see He has done this. If it were not so, I wouldn't be sitting here adding another post to this blog. I won't lie. I don't want these challenging situations in my life, for me or anybody else in my family. But God is God! What greater way to show His realness than to cause me (or somebody else) to trust Him yet another time...and, yet another time, to reveal His faithfulness to my trust in Him. No, it doesn't instantaneously make the situation better, but He lets me know in His special way that He's at work in the midst of whatever it is...when I'm faithful to Him. See it...faith. Like I started this blog in my very first post, it starts and ends with His faithfulness.