I have learned that in our self sufficient country called America, we leave very little room for God to build our faith. Actually we pretty much leave very little room for God in general. When a loved one is sick, we have some of the best hospitals. When disaster strikes, we have the best technology and equipment out there. We don’t live in the horrors of a war-torn country. We don’t personally know poverty, in fact we see very little (if any) real poverty in this country. When does a situation so harsh and real and awful strike that God is not only our first option but he is our only option? Does that even happen here? How then is our faith going to grow stronger if we rely on the world and its conveniences instead of relying on God? I’m not saying these things are a bad thing, I think rather we should thank God for these blessings. What I am saying is: do these things keep us from growing in faith? Do we need to be intentional about allowing God to increase our faith? More intentional then the earthquake victim that can’t find a loved one and God is his only hope for a happy outcome? More intentional then the family praying desperately for their next meal? When God answers their prayers, their faith will be increased! So where does that leave us? Does this mean when a loved one is dying we should not take them to them to the hospital, but pray instead so our faith will increase?:) NO!:) Like I said I think having a hospital near by is a blessing directly from God. I think the faith building key comes in knowing God, Being confident of who we are in him, and by living in the center of his will! Because we have learned that when we intentionally live in Gods will he will ask us to step into situations that we know are literally impossible. But if we dare to trust him and take that step anyway, well, then we have the opportunity to stand in awe of our God and creator who not only made the impossible become possible but who also… YES! you guessed it! He increased our faith!:) One of my favorite testimonies is when we were doing our DTS. We still had our house so obviously we still had bills which was a bit complicated because we weren’t making any money for half a year. So before we left I wrote some checks with dates on them and asked mom to put them in the mail at the right time. Well, we thought our faith had increased when just before we left, God made sure we had enough of money to cover every single expense while we were away, in fact he made sure we had EXTRA! So this left us worry free, if we had done any miscalculations somewhere it would still work out. And then God asked us to do the impossible. We had giving night at DTS. One of the students didn’t yet have enough money to go outreach, which was only a couple weeks away. We felt God was asking us to give a specific amount, which by no means made sense because if we gave that amount we wouldn’t even have enough to cover all our bills. So we talked it over and agreed on an amount that would make it a bit tight but no checks would bounce. I mean we still have to use common sense right? God did after all give us brains:) But we had no peace with this, God said: thats not the amount I said. We said: but we don’t have that much money to give! If we give it, a check will bounce in about 3 weeks! God said: Right now u have it to give, and right now someone else needs it. Let me worry about what you need in 3 weeks!! So even though we knew, many people would call us foolish, in fact we were pretty convinced ourselves that it was foolish and even though it went against every grain of common sense we felt we had, we did it. We gave the amount God wanted us to give. And then we watched our bank account. Does that tell you how weak our faith was?:) Nobody knew about our dilemma and we weren’t about to admit to anyone that we might just have gotten ourselves into one:) The day came when that check should have bounced but for some unknown reason that check didn’t seem to exist. About 2 weeks after this we got money that was owed to us but we weren’t expecting to see it for a couple months yet. And the very next day… That check, that had caused us so much drama, suddenly reappeared and subtracted itself from our account:) To this day I have no idea where God hide that check for a couple weeks, but I do know that he took care of it.:) I also wonder: if we had given our amount instead of Gods amount would that check maybe then have bounced? I will never know but I do know that I walked away from that experience with a deeper conviction then ever that Jesus cares, he’s got this and if u live in his will he will take care of everything else. even the impossible. So go for it:) Live in his will, step out on faith, watch God work and be amazed as your faith grows:)