THE TRIPLE F SERIES: Part 1-Faith

Having a strong and unshaking understanding of the concepts of FAITH, FOCUS and FEAR is one of the prerequisites of living a magnificent life. It is for this reason that Noeses has put together the “triple F series”. The three concepts shall be examined meticulously after which all the concepts will be summed up and the links between them established. The first in this series is FAITH. We crave your indulgence to read with all seriousness, open-mindedness, meticulosity and patience.

FAITH
Faith is an indispensable rule of life; yet very few people have an idea about its deeper meaning. It takes faith to close the gap between the human potential and great achievement. If you are living without faith, then I am sorry to say that you are not actually living, you are rather just existing. When you have faith, you are able to expect good to happen to you even as you are in the present, and you can smile and be happy in the present because you believe in the brightness of your future.
Maybe you have been working so hard but yet you don’t seem to get where you want to go. Maybe you have heard people attribute their extraordinary results to faith and you wonder why that’s never your story. Maybe you don’t understand faith. To tell you the truth, I didn't understand faith. I mean I didn't understand the faith that works; I only understood what I call the theoretical faith. One afternoon in one serene environment on the countryside, an understanding of faith occurred to me and it is my desire to share it with my cherished readers.

What faith isn't?
Having faith is not folding your arms, sitting in your sofa and thinking things will go your way. You cannot believe in the air. Strongly repeating the statement; “I believe” doesn't mean you have faith. It takes something more than that. You can only believe in something. Remember that if you really believe you will act. The only reason you are not acting, is because you don’t have faith.

Faith is more than thinking something is true. Faith is thinking something is true to the extent that we act on it: - W.T Purkiser, Professor emeritus of religion at Point Loma College.

What then is faith?
The Bible is the source of spiritual principle for this post. Generally, faith is having unjustifiable confidence in something that is not necessarily concrete but abstract and probably non-existent. It is the confidence you have even in the unknown. It is faith that turns “what is not” into “what is”.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen- Hebrews 11:1

From Hebrews, there are two aspects to faith; the substance aspect and the evidence aspect. You may be wondering whether there is any difference between the two at all. The substance aspect is the starting point and the evidence aspect is ending point. Both aspects are interdependent and both aspects require that you believe in something because faith is attached to something. “Substance of things hoped for” can be said as “substance of the desire of a good future destination”. This requires that you believe in 6 elements which serve as the substance. These are Yourself, Your dreams, Your plans and actions, People, Your team and Just believe!!(The God factor).
The evidence aspect also requires that you believe in 2 elements which serve as the evidence. These are Your action steps and progress and Just believe!!(The God factor).

What is your substance?

In your quest to overcome challenges and achieve, you must believe in something which serves as a form of substance for you. 

Believe in yourself: Having faith in yourself is one of the best things you can ever do for yourself. Believe that you have the capability to achieve all that you want to achieve. You can be, do or have anything you want. All things are possible. There is no research that has been able to confirm the limits of humanity. Occurrences around us rather confirm the unbounded potential that is resident in each and every one of us. There is something magnificent about you. I need you to think that you are limitless. As a matter of fact you were created in God’s image and likeness. Just have that mindset about yourself, believe it, and you will see great things happening in your life. According to Henry Ford (1863-1947) “whether you think you can or you can’t either way you are right”. This means that,to a large extent whatever you are thinking and believing about yourself is true.

Believe in your dreams: When you believe in yourself, it becomes easy to believe in your dreams. If you do not believe in your dreams, then they are just wishes. Turn your wishes into dreams by believing in them. Most people do not believe in their dreams because of where they come from, what they have been through or even their current situation. I would like you to know that, it doesn't matter where you are from, what you have been through, or how young or how old you think you might be; your dreams are still valid and achievable.

Believe in your plans and actions: Believing in yourself and in your dreams only makes it easier to draw a plan and take the necessary steps. Believe in the strategies that you have used the giant genius in you to formulate. This is necessary because even as you act, there are going to be external forces questioning your abilities and your ways. There are going to be the naysayers and the unbelievers.  With faith, you will be right there proving them wrong. Faith is most important in challenging times since that is when people doubt you the most.

Believe in people: It is very important to believe in people to believe in yourself. You may be wondering why you should even worry about believing in other people. Let’s look at this from two perspectives. The first is that the way you see people and what you see in people is a direct reflection of what you are. When you look at people in a positive light, when you look at people for the strengths they have and when you look at people for what they are and not what they are not; what you are actually doing is that, you are lifting them up by magnifying their strengths. The more attention you give to their strengths, the more strengths they develop and the better they become. The better they become, the better you become as a person too. If you see the good in other people, then you can certainly see the good in yourself.

The second perspective is that when you see people in the light of their potential, they actually grow to match up that potential. Mostly, in our efforts to correct our loved ones, we criticize them and tell them what they did wrong. That may be good but I don’t think it is the best. The reason is simple: when you tell people what they did wrong, you magnify their weakness. By principle, we get more of what we magnify. In essence, when you criticize people, you incapacitate them. I propose another alternative that, it is more encouraging to tell people about what they are capable of becoming. Treat them as such by giving them opportunities to grow. When you give people your trust and hope, they will do everything to keep from letting you down and in the process, they and you benefit. According to Stephen R. Covey “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is, treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be”. If you can genuinely believe in other people, then you can certainly believe in yourself.

Believe in your team: In your faith, it is important to believe in your team. Most people think that success is achieved individually and independently but that’s not true. All the successful people that you know and have heard about were all along the way influenced in one way or the other by another individual or individuals. Whether you have a world-class team or not, you need to believe in the capabilities of your team members. You can do this by emphasizing their strengths and recalling a great work they did in the past when there is a new task to perform. I mentioned previously that when you see people in the light of their potential, they grow to meet their potential. Having faith in your team can raise your team into a world-class team.

Just believe!! There is also another substance of faith that deviates a little from what has been discussed early on. This substance is as important as the others if not more important than the others. This substance is more spiritual than physical. After executing the other basis of faith, there is another basis that makes the others work. This is a deeper level of faith which I call “just believe”. This substance is unseen. At this stage you have to believe in something that you can’t see. What do I mean by all these? Day in and day out as we go about our daily routines, we dream big dreams, determined people turn their dreams into plans, they act on those plans and await good results of course. Even as they wait they “just believe” that everything will work out someway somehow. There is one thing here: every tradition has taught us that there is something bigger than us; that at some point our control alone is not enough, that there are times that we have to succumb to a higher power. Different people call this higher power by different names. These include God, Allah, the Presence, and Holy Guardian Angel among others. I call this higher power God. We believe it is the higher power that causes miracles to happen. The only issue is that due to the power of this level, most people tend to put their all in this level and neglecting the other equally essential levels. The bad news is that it doesn't work that way. That’s why you can find extremely spiritual people who know no success. When all is said and done, you “just” have to believe.

We have been able to deal with the substance aspect. The evidence aspect shall be looked at in our next post. We shall also look at why some people find it difficult to have faith and the best time to have faith.

I have no idea what is going on in your mind right now but like I said before; Noeses doesn't promise to be a repository of all knowledge. Share your thoughts, reservations and questions in the comment box. They mean a lot to us. Thanks for reading. Cheers!