Faith

"Two more critical resources for us are energy and faith. Is faith a resource?" my friend Mike wondered in a recent email.

I used to think of faith as a resource--Jesus says the disciples have "little faith," and even faith the size of a mustard seed enables us to move mountains. (Which depresses me a little-I must not have that much faith!)

But Willard has convinced me faith isn't something quantitative, but more like knowledge or eyesight: you can certainly measure those, but better eyesight isn't so much a resource as a means to relate well with your resources. (Okay, that sounds wierd.) But you know what I mean, right? Being realistic is much more powerful than living in fantasy, obviously. I think faith is the eyesight to see the unseen reality.

So maybe the resources are God's power and grace and people and so on, and faith is the ability to see what God is doing and to get in line with that so that his resources are effective. In a sense I think of it like knowledge of gravity, momentum, friction, and so on. The more you know the laws of physics (like a race-car driver, not like a theoretical physicist) the more power you have access to. Except that God is a person, not a set of physical laws.

Obviously I'm still trying to get a grasp on this. What do you think?