How to tell if you have faith

Assessing the level of our faith can be difficult to do. As I was reading a while ago, I came across a verse that gives a good example of what someone with strong faith does. See this from Luke 17:

3 ¶Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother ^atrespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, ^bforgive him.

4 And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I ^arepent; thou shalt forgive him.

5 And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.

It appears that when Jesus told the disciples the requirement to forgive, the disciples said, "that's tough. In order for us to do that, we need to have more faith." Faith is requisite to forgiving because you need to believe that Christ has already done what's necessary for all justice to work out in the end. Thus, what's required of us is to forgive all men that we might be forgiven ourselves. There's a great book on this topic called The Peacegiver.

Oftentimes we think that someone with a lot of faith can do great miracles, or speak impressive words. While that may be true, perhaps one of the best tests of faith is one's ability to forgive others. If you can forgive, your faith is real. If there is someone who appears to be trying but continues to stumble, and you don't forgive him/her, your faith is weak. I know of someone who goes to church regularly but has bad feelings for her/her parents and will not forgive them (despite the parents not trying to do anything bad). That person has no faith, regardless what else he/she is doing in life.

The disciples recognized how true this is and asked for more faith when hearing Jesus' lesson.