The Word of God teaches that faith is a gift. And Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. One of the chief difficulties is the failure to see that faith can be received only as it is imparted to our hearts by God Himself. You cannot manufacture it. You cannot work it up. You can believe a promise and at the same time not have the faith to appropriate that promise. But we have formed the habit of trying to appropriate by belief, forgetting that belief is a mental quality. Trying to conjure up faith through belief puts us into the metaphysical realm.