Host: What is faith? Do you need it to pray?

Rock Schuler: Faith is a basic trust in God and in Gods goodness. Faith is to believe, to trust the God is working for our good. Faith is to, as Paul put it, trust that God is working all things together for good for those who love Him or as Julian of Norwich put it, faith is to believe that all things will be well. In other words, we believe, we trust that God has our goodness at heart and the God is actively working on our behalf. That trust, that belief carries us through even dark times when God's work on our behalf is not all that evident to us. That's what it is to trust, to have faith, to believe. We know that God is working on our behalf even when there is no rational reason to believe that, no visible evidence to believe that. That kind of faith, that kind of belief is not something that is really inherently an ability of the human being. In another words, we cant have that kind of faith on our own; we need God to give us that kind of faith. So faith is a gift from God, the trust the belief that God is working on our behalf that comes from God Himself. What we are asked to do is open our hearts, so that God can lead us into that kind of trust, to open our hearts to that kind of faith. Then we know that there is somebody in our corner, there is somebody looking out for our life, there is somebody working our circumstances toward an end goal that is for our good.