By Duke Taber
Something is shifting in how people relate to Scripture. According to a 2025 Barna study, approximately 50% of self-identified Christians now report reading the Bible weekly — the highest rate in more than a decade. People are opening their Bibles again. But opening a Bible and actually studying faith — digging into what it is, how it works, where it breaks down, and how it grows — are very different things.
If you’ve ever felt that your faith was thin, reactive, or built more on emotion than on something that could actually hold weight in hard seasons, you’re not alone. Most Christians never sit down to study what the Bible actually teaches about faith in any systematic way. They pick up fragments here and there — a sermon, a verse on a coffee mug, a quote from a book — and try to build something sturdy from pieces that don’t quite fit together.
A complete Bible study on faith changes that. It doesn’t just inspire you. It grounds you.
I’ve been leading Bible studies for decades, and I can tell you that few topics produce more “aha” moments than faith. People come in thinking they already know what faith is. Most leave realizing they’ve been carrying a significantly smaller version of it — and that the real thing is both more demanding and more powerful than they imagined.
Here’s what you’ll actually encounter when you go deep.
What Faith Really Is — According to the Bible, Not Culture
The first thing a good Bible study on faith will do is correct your definition. Most Christians, if asked what faith is, will say something like “believing in God” or “trusting that things will work out.” These aren’t wrong, exactly — but they’re like describing the ocean as “wet.” Technically true, deeply incomplete.
The foundational text is Hebrews 11:1:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” — Hebrews 11:1 (NKJV)
That word substance — the Greek word hypostasis — means a real foundation, a settled basis under your feet. Faith isn’t a feeling of optimism. It’s not wishful thinking dressed in spiritual language. The writer of Hebrews is saying that faith is the actual ground you stand on when visible evidence isn’t there yet. It’s the reality of something before you can see it.
This distinction matters enormously. A lot of people have what I’d call circumstantial faith — their trust in God rises and falls depending on how life is going. That’s not the faith Scripture is describing. Biblical faith is confidence rooted in the character and promises of God, not in the circumstances surrounding you.
A thorough study will also walk you through the Greek words behind “faith” — pistis (belief, trust, conviction) — and help you see why faith in Scripture is always relational. You’re not believing in an abstract proposition. You’re trusting a Person.
The Old Testament Roots of Faith
Many Christians treat the Old Testament like backstory — a long preamble before the “real” stuff starts in Matthew. A complete faith study will dismantle that misunderstanding entirely.
Faith didn’t begin at Pentecost. It began in Eden, and it runs like a red thread through every covenant God made with His people. Abraham trusted God’s promise before he saw any of it:
“And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.” — Genesis 15:6 (NKJV)
That single verse — quoted three times in the New Testament — is the theological hinge on which the whole doctrine of justification by faith turns. Paul builds his entire argument in Romans 4 on this moment. Abraham’s faith wasn’t peripheral to his story. It was his story.
A rich Bible study on faith will trace the lineage: Noah building an ark for a flood that hadn’t come. Moses choosing suffering with God’s people over the comforts of Egypt. Rahab hiding the spies because she believed the God of Israel was real. The Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11 isn’t a list of superheroes. It’s a gallery of ordinary people who staked their lives on the character of a God they couldn’t fully see — and were not disappointed.
Understanding these stories isn’t just inspiring. It shows you the texture of what faith looks like when it’s real, and it answers a quiet question many believers have: Has this ever actually worked for anyone?
Faith and Doubt — The Tension the Bible Doesn’t Hide
Here’s where many Bible studies get cowardly, and where a complete study on faith has to be honest: the Bible is full of people who believed and still struggled with doubt.
Thomas is the obvious example, but he’s hardly alone. The disciples were terrified in a storm while Jesus slept in the boat. John the Baptist — the forerunner of Christ, a man Jesus called the greatest prophet ever born — sent messengers from prison asking, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3, NKJV). Abraham laughed when God told him his wife would conceive at ninety. The psalms are shot through with lament, confusion, and cries that God feels absent.
A good study on faith doesn’t smooth this over. It explores it honestly — including what Jesus said to doubters, which was not condemnation but invitation: “Do not be afraid; only believe” (Mark 5:36, NKJV).
The question of faith and doubt is one of the most personally pressing issues in the Christian life, especially when prayer doesn’t produce the outcome you expected, or when suffering arrives without a clear explanation. A complete study will hold these questions with honesty rather than pretending they don’t exist. It will also show you that doubt is not the opposite of faith — unbelief is. Doubt is faith in conflict. Unbelief is faith abandoned.
Faith That Acts — James and the Question of Works
No study on faith would be complete without a serious reckoning with James 2. It’s the passage that makes people nervous because it seems to contradict Paul:
“Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” — James 2:17 (NKJV)
People sometimes read James and Paul as fighting with each other. They aren’t. They’re fighting two different errors.
Paul, writing to people who thought they could earn their way to God through religious performance, insists that faith — not works — is the ground of salvation. James, writing to people who thought they could mentally assent to God’s existence while living unchanged lives, insists that real faith produces visible action. They’re not contradicting each other. They’re completing each other.
A thorough Bible study on faith will help you hold both truths without flattening either one. Saving faith is not merely intellectual agreement. Abraham didn’t just think God’s promises were plausible; he picked up a knife to offer his son. Rahab didn’t just believe the Israelites’ God was powerful; she tied a scarlet cord in her window and risked her life. Faith that is real is faith that moves.
This section of a good study tends to be personally convicting in the best way — not guilt-producing, but clarifying. It helps you ask, What does my faith actually look like in my choices, my finances, my relationships, my willingness to take risks for God?
How Faith Grows — and What Threatens It
One of the most practically valuable parts of a complete faith study is learning how faith actually develops over time. The Bible gives us both the process and the obstacles.
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” — Romans 10:17 (NKJV)
This is one of the most important verses on the mechanics of faith. It tells you where faith comes from — not from working yourself into an emotional state, not from mustering more willpower, but from sustained exposure to the Word of God. Faith grows through hearing. That’s why studying the Bible consistently is not optional for the person who wants a deeper faith. It is the primary mechanism.
A good study will also address what weakens faith: fear, distraction, unresolved sin, isolation from community, and what the author of Hebrews calls being “entangled” in things that slow you down (Hebrews 12:1). Barna’s 2025 research found that more than half of U.S. Christian adults (56%) say their spiritual life is entirely private — and those who hold this view are significantly less likely to report regular time with God or a strong sense of spiritual progress. Faith is not supposed to be a solo project. It grows in community, in worship, in accountability, in prayer.
You’ll also study Peter’s walk on water — one of the most instructive passages on what causes faith to waver. Peter didn’t sink because the storm got louder. He sank when he shifted his gaze from Jesus to the waves. The external conditions hadn’t changed. His focus had. A study on faith will keep returning to this: Where are your eyes?
Faith for Healing — A Category That Deserves Honest Attention
You can’t do a thorough study on faith in the New Testament without encountering healing. Jesus consistently connected faith and healing — “Your faith has made you well” appears multiple times in the Gospels. James instructs elders to anoint the sick and pray in faith.
“And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” — James 5:15 (NKJV)
A complete study won’t avoid this territory or minimize it. It will also wrestle honestly with the hard questions — why some people receive healing and others don’t, whether healing is guaranteed in the atonement, and how to stand in faith when the physical evidence is still saying something different.
Studying what the Bible teaches about faith and healing is valuable not just for those currently facing illness, but for every believer who will eventually stand by a hospital bed praying for someone they love. Theological clarity in those moments is not cold or academic. It’s the difference between a faith that survives the crisis and one that doesn’t.
Faith, Grace, and Salvation — The Theological Core
Any serious Bible study on faith will spend significant time on Ephesians 2:8-9:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” — Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV)
This is the heartbeat of the gospel. Faith is the hand that receives what grace freely offers. A study will unpack what it means that even faith itself is a gift — that no one comes to God through sheer personal determination, but through the drawing and enabling work of the Holy Spirit.
This section tends to be deeply moving for people carrying guilt about their own faith feeling insufficient. The answer Scripture gives is not “try harder to believe more.” It’s “look at the One who is the author and finisher of your faith” (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV). Your faith is not primarily about your performance. It’s about the object of your faith — and that object, Jesus Christ, is entirely sufficient.
Ligonier Ministries’ 2025 State of Theology survey found that 53% of American evangelicals agree “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature” — revealing that even in committed Christian circles, the theological ground on which faith rests is often confused. A rigorous Bible study on faith provides the clarity that corrects these misunderstandings, not through condemnation but through the illuminating work of Scripture itself.
Living Faith — What It Looks Like in Practice
The final movement of a complete faith study is application. It’s not enough to understand faith theologically. The goal is to live it.
A good study will guide you to examine your own prayer life: Are you praying with expectation? Are you asking specifically, or using vague, safe prayers that can’t really be answered? It will push you to identify areas where fear has displaced faith — financial decisions made from anxiety rather than trust, relationships avoided because faith felt too risky, callings left unpursued because the outcome wasn’t guaranteed.
It will also address the long game. The seasons of faith shift throughout life — there are stretches of clarity and stretches of darkness, times of mountaintop experience and long valleys where God seems silent. A complete study prepares you for both, teaching you how to stand firm in faith while waiting and how to keep believing when circumstances haven’t yet caught up to God’s promises.
The examples of unwavering faith in Scripture — from Abraham to Joseph to Ruth to Paul in a Roman prison — are not meant to make you feel inadequate. They’re meant to show you what’s possible when ordinary people decide that God’s word is more reliable than what they can see.
This Is Worth Your Time
I want to be direct about something. Lifeway Research notes that among Christians who actively prioritize their faith, 68% qualify as “Scripture Engaged” — deeply interacting with God’s Word — compared to only 8% of nominal Christians. The gap between those two groups is not primarily a matter of intelligence or spiritual giftedness. It’s largely a matter of whether someone has ever sat down and studied the Word seriously.
A complete Bible study on faith will not just give you more information. It will give you a more stable foundation beneath your feet, a more honest framework for navigating doubt, a more grounded theology of prayer and healing, and a more specific vision of what it looks like to actually live by faith rather than just affirm it.
That’s a different kind of Christian life. And it’s available to anyone willing to open the Book and go deeper.
Ready to Go Deeper?
If this article has stirred something in you, here are some practical steps:
- Start with the 13-lesson faith Bible study series at AnsweredFaith.com — it’s designed to take you from the foundations through lived application
- Pair your study with a Bible reading plan focused on faith to keep Scripture at the center
- Consider going through the material with a small group — faith grows in community, not just in private
- Journal your responses to what you’re learning; Bible study journaling helps you process and internalize rather than just accumulate information
- If you’re navigating a specific trial that’s testing your faith, spend additional time in Hebrews 11 and Romans 8 — let the Word speak directly into your situation
Resources
- Barna Group — State of the Church 2025 — current research on faith and Bible engagement in America
- American Bible Society — State of the Bible 2025 — comprehensive annual data on Bible use and scripture engagement
- Ligonier Ministries — State of Theology 2025 — evangelical theological health survey
- Lifeway Research — 8 Truths About American Bible Readers — practical insights for those wanting to deepen engagement with Scripture
- Blue Letter Bible — free original language tools for word studies on pistis, hypostasis, and related faith terminology
- Desiring God — What Is Faith? — biblically grounded articles and sermons on the nature and practice of saving faith
By Duke Taber
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