God tests our faith to strengthen it for the tasks He sets before us. God encourages our faith by giving additional promises of victory. God encourages our faith by granting another sign that confirms His word. Faith means more than trusting God. Faith also means seeking God and wanting to please Him. God honors our faith by giving wisdom to prepare for victory. God honors our faith by giving courage to lead others into battle. Faith sees the invisible and does the impossible. Faith wins the battle with few resources and unusual means. God gives opportunity to enlarge support after faith is shown. God recognizes our faith when His people depend on His promises rather than on numbers or natural strength.

Through faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed. Paul placed the word herself in the emphatic position to draw attention to the fact that Sarah did not borrow faith from Abraham regarding this incident. She stood on her own and received the blessing on the strength of her faith in God. Through faith she was supernaturally healed. It is evident that she repented of the doubts revealed by her laughing and then using the weak faith she already had she stepped out and was given more to carry her through this much more difficult trial. God adds what is lacking after one steps out with what one has. When Sarah stepped out with the faith that she did have that is when God added what she lacked. She received strength as a gift on the basis of her insufficient faith. God gives power to the faint and to them that have no might he increases strength just like He did for Abraham and just like He did for Sarah. One can go from strength to strength from what one has to do to what God is willing and able to give so that the course is completed. This pictures an exchange of strength from God to His people. God is working in His people both to will and to do. If God brings a trial because the trial is part of His will He will supply the faith for one to overcome it. One must step out in faith with what one already has to resist the incessant pressure of human reason motivated by carnality. God mercifully covers defects in the relationship with Him and puts them behind Him as though they never occurred.

Faith is strengthened when a person hears the Word of God and responds by acting on the evidence it provides. God supplies this evidence through His promises and through the experiences He leads His people to encounter. These experiences often involve trials that test faith and require patience to allow the testing to produce its intended result of greater completeness. When faith is exercised during periods of waiting, it grows stronger because the person learns to rely on God rather than on immediate outcomes. Failures of faith occur, yet God continues to work patiently by providing further evidence from His Word and by intervening to deliver those who keep turning back to Him. This process repeats as individuals face new situations that stretch their faith beyond previous limits. Out of weakness faith is made strong when a person persists in believing what God has said rather than what circumstances suggest. The result is steady growth toward the kind of faith that honors God and prepares a person for greater responsibilities in His purpose.