Faith VS belief

I have never thought much about the differences between faith and belief. My homework this week in "living a praying life" is all about that and in this thinking I am getting clarity on concepts that I haven't allowed myself to think about before because it was too hard for me to handle. 

We can believe in silly things-- believing in them doesn't make them true. We believe in Santa Clause, that he comes and deliveries us toys in the night, but it's not true--it's our parents giving us anonymous gifts from "Santa"-- we believe in prayer-- and we believe if we pray hard and earnestly that God will answer our prayers; we will get that job, be healed from cancer, we will have whatever were prayed for.

 This morning I realized though, when we do this, we are not having faith in God when-we-believe-that-God will answer our-prayers-our-way, instead we believe  we are entitled to what we are asking because we believe in this "earnestly praying" system. 

Having faith in God, is just that-faith in God. He hears all our prayers, he sees us believing in him and he also sees us believing in ourselves or this "earnestly praying" system we created ourselves. 

He sees us get mad at Him when he doesn't mold Himself into the God that we wanted. He sees us doubt Him when he doesn't grant us all our wishes. He sees us miss the whole point of having a relationship with Him. 

It's not about what we get or have, it's just about GOD. We have faith in God and we need to believe in Him, nothing else.