Faith is Knowledge

The disciples said, "Lord, increase our faith...."  What they did not realize at the time was that as they walked with Jesus for three years, and as they were later to experience the Gift of the Father, the Holy Spirit, their faith was growing. 

Faith (Knowledge of Who God Is) is not theory; it is not "I think," or "I believe," even though those are the only words we have to describe our experience.  Faith is our experience:  we can be sure of what we know (believe) because we have walked it, breathed it, lived it.  Someone once said, "The man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument." 

When Peter's head went below the angry sea, and he knew he was drowning, he felt the saving grasp of a strong hand on his, pulling him up and out of the crashing waves that threatened to overcome him.  After that experience, Psalm 18, when he heard it sung in the Temple, would never have a "poetic" meaning -- a metaphor-- but would always describe reality as he had experienced it:

The waves of death rose about me;

the torrents of destruction assailed me;

the snares of the grave surrounded me;

the traps of death confronted me.

In my anguish I called to the Lord;

I cried to my God for help.

From his temple he heard my voice;

my cry to him reached his ears.

From on high, he reached down and seized me;

he drew me forth from the mighty waters.

He saved me from my powerful foe,

from my enemies, whose strength I could not match.

If Peter was later to lead the new church, he had to know, to have lived, Psalm 18.  He had not to "believe" it as a theory, but to know it in his cells, in his DNA.  His experience on a physical plane would undoubtedly have transferred to a spiritual plane after he had betrayed the Lord, his friend.  Surely Peter would have wanted to, like Judas, throw himself headlong from the Temple mount and commit suicide.  He was dying inside from what he had done.  Again, if he was the lead a church of sinners, he had to experience the strong, saving, restoring-to-life hand of Jesus, pulling him out of his depression and oppression, and "setting him on a high place," as Psalm 18 goes on to say:

It is God who arms me with strength

and makes my way perfect.

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;

He enables me to stand on the heights....

(read the rest; it's strength to the soul). 

Peter would be ready to lead the church only after he had experienced his own weakness and the strength of Jesus.  His confidence could not be in his own gifts and strengths, but in God who saves us despite our own foolishness. 

It is only the person who says, "I was hard-pressed and I was falling ---but God opened a way for me" that I believe.  And for each one of us, "hard-pressed" has a different scenario.  We do not all have to be lying in a gutter in order to experience the loving and saving action of God in our lives.  I once felt guilty for feeling "hard-pressed" when, compared to my neighbors and to the third-world of poverty, hunger, despair, and oppression, my life was so easy.  But for each one of us, the path seems to close around us at some point, and we do not know where to go. 

There, there, is the doorway to faith -- to experiencing the strong hand on God reaching down to draw us clear and to set us on a high place.  Only then are we able to say to others, "Our God Saves!"  Only then do we have faith; we know what we know and nothing can convince us otherwise.