3 Solutions To Any Problem: Part 1

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

In my opinion, faith, hope and love are the solutions we need to solve any problem that life brings our way. No matter what life brings to you or takes from you, there are 3 things that always remain: faith, hope and love. No one can take these things away from you because they are attitudes that you choose in your mind to have. We do lose our faith sometimes, but that is not because someone takes it away, it is because we decide to give it up. There are many scriptures in the Bible that have both the word faith and hope in them together. They are so closely related that sometimes they are hard to distinguish from each other. But the greatest of these is love. Love is what “makes the world go round.” It is so important that we choose every day to have the love of God in our lives and to give that love away to others. But, let’s talk about faith for a while.
What is faith exactly? Well, the Bible gives us some answers. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--,” (Ephesians 2:8). Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” And Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” So, if you put these three verses together, the Bible tells us that faith is believing that God sent his son Jesus to die on the cross to save us for our sins. It is believing this to be true even though you were not there to witness the whole event. It is believing that God will do what He says in the Bible and clinging to these promises.
Now that we know what faith is, how does this help us through the daily struggles of life? For example, say that you lost a loved one unexpectedly. How can faith in God help you through this time? It might seem like an impossible mountain to climb and that you cannot get through life this way, but the Bible tells us, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20). The incredible thing about a mustard seed is that it is one of the tiniest of all seeds, yet when it grows turns into one of the bigger plants. It is an incredible analogy, because all you need to do is believe in God and trust that He will take care of you. Even if you don’t know how that is possible. Just give God the amount of faith that you can, and He will take it and help you through trials and temptations in ways that will make your faith big enough to move mountains. He starts where you are at this point in time. Whether it is just a speck of faith or quite a bit, He will help your faith to grow big enough to move mountains. It all starts with the choice to trust God with the outcome of your situation. 2 Corinthians 5:7 tells us that “we live by faith, not by sight.” We don’t know the future, we don’t know the great plans God has for us. It may look as though you are at the bottom of a mountain and you cannot see your way to the top. That is true. You cannot. But if you put your faith in God, He will carry you up the mountain because he knows the future. So even though things may not LOOK endurable, they are. Psalm 56:3 says, “When I am afraid, I will trust in you God.” If we put our trust in God, he is faithful to take care of us. Even if we decide to lose faith in God, faith will always be there waiting for us to change our minds. It is just a simple choice of trusting God for our todays and tomorrows. When we make this choice, then we begin to have this thing called “Hope”. We know this because the Bible says in James 1:2-3 to “consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” Earlier in the book of Romans, it is stated, “we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance [produces] character; and character [produces] hope.” So if we put these two verses together we can deduce that trials and suffering enable our faith to grow which helps us to keep fighting, which in turn will give us hope. Hope will be the topic of my article next week. Then we will discuss love. And finally, we will tie all three of them together so that we can solve any problem that life brings to us.