The field of tension between faith and fall
- By John Eagles, April 12, 2001.
This page is part of an ERW course, Divine Principle.
People yearn for all kind of things. Some people want to become rich, others want to get famous. There are people who want to gain much knowledge, but those people who have chosen to get much faith have really made the best choice of all.
When you have decided that to gain faith is the highest you could reach in life, then you did not only choose for faith, but once you have built a good relation with God, God will give you all the other blessings of life just for free. When it is your only goal in life to develop good faith in God, then you eventually also will gain knowledge and dominion over creation. People and angels will come to love you very much. And even if you wished to live a hidden life, you would not be able to escape becoming famous. But if you really have concluded that faith is the most important asset of all, then all those other things you will take for granted. They are just part of your life, part of your world over which you took responsibility.
Those people who have chosen to develop good faith in God, those people really have made the wisest choice.
How can we gain faith?
This raises again the question of how we can gain faith.
God has created us according to a plan. God’s plan is a concept for man, and this concept is based on good principles. When man functions in the way that God wanted man to function, then man is good.
Good man is created from God’s Word. Before there was man, there was the Word. Man is an embodiment of God’s Word.
The highest goal of life should be that you become an embodiment of God’s Word. You should become an expression of God’s original Word.
How do you reach this? This is only possible when you build up faith. It is by building up faith, invisible faith, that you can become an original person. An original person is someone who is an expression of God’s Word. And because man is a free and responsible person, man himself or herself is responsible for becoming such an expression of God’s Word. You have to know God’s Word and you have to believe God’s Word. You yourself also are responsible to receive God’s Word. You must make the conditions so that God can give His Word to you and so that you can understand God’s Word and so that you have desire to live according to God’s Word.
How are you going to receive God’s Word? This you must do by building a Foundation of Faith. We could also say that you have to gain more and more faith, but we use the word 'foundation' to emphasize the fact that faith needs to be built upon foundations. You build a small foundation of faith, and upon this small foundation of faith, you build a larger foundation of faith. Faith doesn’t come to you just like that. It needs a long time of you fulfilling your tasks given by God to increase your faith.
How do you increase your faith in God? How do you make your Foundation of Faith stronger?
This is done by making offerings to God
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