Would a person ask for something if they alone were capable of satisfying their desire for whatever it may be that they are lacking? A person might ask a friend for a stick of gum, and actually possess their own gum at the same time. In this situation the person asking for the stick of gum simply does not want to use away the last of the gum they have; they might prefer to save their own gum for later. But if there was no price for gum and it was available to anyone and everyone at any time, then the only reason a person would ask someone else for a stick of gum is because they themselves were inadequate to retrieve the gum. If the person asking for the gum is inadequate, this must mean that they are now at the source of which the gum is being dispersed freely and they are asking for a piece of the free gum. This would mean that the gum could only be dispersed through one individual and through him the gum was available to anyone and everyone indiscriminately. The same coherent reasoning can be applied to asking for faith from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. When a person is having doubts, it is both proper and necessary of them to ask Christ to increase their faith, just as the apostles did in Luke 17. People do this more often than they think. When a person prays for strength from God to get through something or when a person prays for the ability to trust in God before they start some difficult period in their life, which I have found to happen quite a bit, they are ultimately asking for faith. Now that we can agree that you, as a believer, ask God for faith and that faith is given indiscriminately to all at the cost of nothing to them through one individual, namely Jesus Christ, we can also agree that since you ask for it, you must be inadequate of attaining it yourself.
Ephesians 1:13 reads: And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 2:8 reads: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith…
Both of these verses indicate that you have been saved through faith, or “having believed” you were given the holy spirit. No one has the Holy Spirit that is not regenerated, and given a heart of flesh. Therefore it is necessary to not simply view faith as something you ask for or receive after you are regenerated, but it is to be understood as the means to which you were regenerated. The Greek word, which is translated as faith, is pistis (noun) and believe, is translated from pistevo (verb). The word believe (Greek verb “pistevo”), according to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, means: to have faith, therefore we can affirm that believing and having faith are one in the same.
We have agreed that you and I are both inadequate to attain faith ourselves, which is why we ask God to increase our faith. If we are incapable of increasing our faith ourselves after regeneration, how much more inadequate were we as impenitent unregenerate sinners? This is too say that we did not muster up the faith at the hour we first believed to bring us to salvation. We can now affirm that we could not have had anything at all to do with our faith at that glorious hour, which leads us also to believe that we could not have chosen him, but that he chose us.
Ephesians 2:8-For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God
