How does one examine his or her faith in Jesus?
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! (2 Corinthians 13:5 ESV)
Once in a while, I think believers like you and me, we take our faith in Jesus for granted. We say we’re of the faith and we practice, for the most part, the tenants of our beliefs and express them as best as we can, when we can. But has our faith become more cultural and less practical? Sometimes I believe that my faith is more cultural than a daily practice in my life because I don’t think about it anymore, I just do it without think or any intentionality. The Corinthian church was no different.
The first century believers in Corinth would practice their said beliefs without any intentions or purpose. They did the work of God and acted upon the commands of God because that’s what they did, that’s how they identified themselves. It is clear that living that way is not why Jesus died for you and me on the cross. It wasn’t for our blindly dimwitted practices of faith but of intelligent and thoughtful practice of our belief in Jesus as our savior.
The “test” of faith is simple as it is complex. We must look at why we practice the things that we do in our faith. We question: “were my intentions in my actions for God or were they misguided attempts on doing what God would do because God says to do it?” If the answer is: my intentions were for the glory of God and only the glory of God, then our faith is working and purposeful. Examine your faith regularly and make sure you are practicing what you believe intentionally.
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