How does one become full of faith?

How did you come to trust the people in your life that you depend on? Is your trust in your father or in your mother due to what they say or more by the things they’ve done? Has your spouse’s actions proven love to you? His faithfulness?

And you? Are you trustworthy? Do your actions match your words?



To truly walk by faith, you must move on what you know. Knowledge doesn’t necessarily elicit movement in the right direction. I can know and believe that God answers prayer according to His will, but if I don’t pray, nothing will happen. I can know that His will is for all my family to walk by faith, but if I don’t act on my knowledge, pray and share the truth with them, my faith is dead.

There are many promises in the Bible that give us assurance of victory in life. We might have heard the hymn, Standing on the Promises, we might gather all the promises and pray them fervently, but if we are not acting in accordance with them, we have a lopsided faith and will likely hinder the fruitfulness of our prayers.

Certainly God answers prayers and restores what the locusts have eaten. Those are promises we CAN stand on found in Matthew 7:7 & Joel 2:25. But if prayers go unanswered and the locusts have stolen from us, it’s good to discern if there might be a reason.

Perhaps we have prodigal sons and daughters.

Before I go further with this example, I want to state that our faith, though often related to the faith of our parents, it is not dependent on our parents.

God does redeem and restore and heal and bless us and our children when we follow him.

However, if we who were saved before having children have prayed for our children, but have failed to act on our faith, we might be seeing our children wandering from the faith. We might wonder, “Where in the world is God and why isn’t He answering our prayers?”



(If you came to faith after your children are raised, your prayers plus active faith will be greatly rewarded by God! Hold on tight!)

When you brought up your children, did you read and heed Deuteronomy 6:4-9? Did you teach your children God’s word while you were together in your home? Did you talk about His ways while you were driving down the road? Did you write His words around your house so they knew the importance of them? Did you live a life centered on His word? Did you pray with your children?

If the answer to those questions is yes, praise God, keep praying His promises and acting on His prompting. You will see God’s faithfulness!

If for some reason — perhaps ignorance or marital issues distracted you or illness hijacked your consistency — upon seeing you were negligent of impressing God’s ways into your children, please don’t feel discouraged!

The object of this post is to encourage you to grab God’s hand now and from here pursue victory!

Nothing is ever beyond redemption! But if you have failed, it’s important to know where, and name it so you can start acting on what you believe.

If you fail to see and acknowledge your areas of weakness, you’ll likely see no change. You’d still be praying and trusting but failing to do anything.

Wait! You might think, my children are adults, and I don’t have parental power or authority over them any longer.

False! If you identify an area of failure or weakness in your formative parenting, you can go to your children and tell them the ways you failed and ask their forgiveness. Even if they are not receptive to your apology, you’ve spoken the truth and broken off any foothold the enemy had through your failure.

Next, ask the Lord to help you identify any areas you have neglected during their adult years and do the same. Have you looked lightly on their sin because you are hinging your hope of their salvation on your prayers alone?

When adult children hear the truth; your words of truth and love will bring a cog to the gears that have allowed them to persist in their current way of thinking.

Confession is a catalyst to change.

My daughter was recently set free from something that had rooted in her heart during her teen years (she’s 30). This liberation was God’s work, but I found myself actively participating as her mom. It was an intense week before Thanksgiving. On top of being sick with a bad respiratory bug, I was awake for hours during the night, praying.

God knew exactly what had happened in her past and what continued to steal freedom and joy from her and those close to her. I’d sensed a deep need for inner healing when she’d be deeply wounded by things that could otherwise be easily dealt with, but felt monumental to her.

I’ll never forget the 4:00 wake-up on a November Tuesday that compelled me to drive to church and cry out for the freedom for my daughter. The word “bitter root” came to mind that morning from Hebrews 12:15. After praying, I knew God wanted me to go to her house. It was there that I learned of words that had been spit in her face by bullies during her high school years. Words that implanted in her heart. As they sank in, she felt responsible for the things she was accused of, even though they weren’t true.

She admitted to looking at herself in the mirror with loathing. In tears, I held her face in my hands and told her the truth. “You are God’s masterpiece, a beautiful creation, and those words spoken about you were not from God but from Satan, the accuser of God’s people.”

Two days later, I woke again — at 3am — with the words reverberating in my head, “The stupidest thing I ever did as a mother was take my daughter on a mission trip with the boy who abused her.”

I typed an email to my daughter that morning. It stated that the boyfriend issues which caused so much friction in her heart, in our lives, and spilled out on the mission trip were due to “abuse.” My husband and I had seen a little bit of it, but she told me so much more on Tuesday.

I suddenly understood my failure to act wisely in several areas. I repented of those mistakes to the Lord, and then called my daughter to ask her forgiveness.

Two days later, after combing through details together and having God reveal lies, her number rang into my phone. I picked up and upon hearing heavy sobs I cried, “What’s wrong, Honey?!”

I’m holding my breath waiting while she catches hers.

“NOTHING!! The anger is gone!!” She proceeded to tell me of the areas where anger would normally grip her. There is now a notable absence of anger.

This new freedom set in motion restoration of every relationship that had become strained due to the unhealed place in her soul.

At one point in her life when I wanted to hold on too tightly to her, to protect her, God gave me Psalm 126:6. It was a comfort, but also a mystery to me regarding what He meant. She did not know this when God gave the same verse to her. When she told me, we rejoiced because we can both see that she is already sowing seeds into young girls. Her work in youth group is bearing fruit out of the understanding gleaned through the painful wounds she endured.