I remember going to different churches in Chile (and then in the States), and priests or pastors would talk about having faith for something or doing it by faith.

They never explained what they exactly meant. You have to “apply your faith” and “you have to have faith”. “Do it by faith”. It always sounded so mysterious the way they said it. Their voices would go deep when the say “by faith” and drop their chin down.

I even talked to a couple of preachers and asked what do you mean “doing something by faith”? Both times I got practically the same answer. “Just that, by faith!” and again the voice will go down and one of them even frowned.

Just before I was going to take my examinations to graduate from high school, a classmate of mine and I offered to walk on our knees for three blocks to reach the sanctuary of the Virgin of Lourdes. It hurt a lot but we did it and we passed the exams. The comments of every friend of my mother that learned about our “sacrifice” were that we had “great faith”.

So something in my mind did not make much sense of this faith concept. I think I understood it, intellectually, as having confidence or expectation for something and making an effort to obtain that something. Was it like going up the spiral, my goals and objectives?

Even after I was baptized again at Biscayne Bay in Florida by a young Presbiterian pastor in swimming shorts, I didn’t really grasped the full concept. But according to everyone of the ladies in swimming suits attending, I had accepted Jesus by faith.

My first baptism was in Chile and I really don’t remember it. I was a baby. However, my baptism seemed to have been a huge occasion. My grandparents came from their farm to the big church, now a cathedral, to participate in the ceremony. My parents said that more than 50 people were invited. They came to the baptism and then to the reception at my grandparents farm house.

I still remember seeing a card that was given to all the people that came to my baptism. A beautiful ornate white lace-like card in expensive paper.

After I was kicked out of the parochial school (see My Religious Impiousness), I don’t remember going to church. It was only when my parents moved to the Providencia neighborhood in Santiago that we started going to the church at the Pedro de Valdivia square.

I had a good time there, not at the masses, but putting together marionette shows for the kids. I did these shows with a neighbor friend of mine about 3 to 5 years younger than me who later became a very well known composer, singer, producer and choreographer in Chile. My mother taught him how to play my accordion. His humor, imagination and enthusiasm were delightful. His name was Pepe Gallinato. I received a very tender, grateful and nostalgic letter from him remembering our childhood, teen years and our puppeteering adventures. He moved to Argentina where he continued in the artistic world for some years. He was married to Mirta Furioso an Argentinian dancer.

Also, after church, my father treated mother and me to ice cream.

All this to say that the nuns and the priests never managed to make me understand what faith was.

Many years after my second baptism, and after attending different churches, I finally came to listen to, not just hear, a preacher that I had seen on TV but never paid any real attention to, Kenneth Copeland.

God managed to use him to make me understand faith. Even then, it took a while for me to get it: I didn’t have to do anything to have faith. It has been given to me in the same measure that it has been given to every believer in Jesus Christ. It is blindly trusting in God’s will for me.

I read that Abraham brought his son to sacrifice him, as he was asked by God to do. But knowing, really knowing, God so well that he knew there was going to be a way out. Gen 22:5  Abraham said to his servants: ““Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”” (Genesis 22:5 – New Living Translation” 2019)
Yes, by faith, he knew they both would come back.

I listened about the woman that, by faith, knew that just by touching Jesus’ tallit (prayer shawl) she would be cured, healed in body and soul forever.

Reading and internally listening to the Word of God, I understood what faith is because I finally was liberated from the preconceptions and false concepts I grew up with.

“Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” (“Romans 10:17 NKJV – – Bible Gateway,” n.d.)

Before, I had an ear by mistake.