A Persuasion Borne of Encounter

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.”   Romans 4:18-22 ESV 

Arminians and Calvinists incessantly argue about the role of faith and why it is what it is.

 Calvinists (for the supposed glory of God) blame faith in its entirety on God. Thy exchange election for faith as the issue of consequence in salvation, all the while never truly admitting that if God is solely to blame for its appearance, than he's also fully to blame for its absence. Since I don't believe God is self-loathing in the least, what does that say about his scathing judgments on unbelief?

Arminians believe faith sparks out of the human in response to God's grace. It doesn't have to ignite, people can resist, both God's determined plan and the Holy Spirit who manifests his grace. The conviction within the soul in regard to the Gospel that the Holy Spirit stirs can be reacted to or ignored. To call that response a work would be to not understand the meaning of the word, "work." 

Positive Confessionists emphasize faith as a willful action, something that does, I think, meet the definition of work. This is

not at all the pattern of Abraham, father of faithful, for he never "worked up" his faith, never lied to himself about what he was experiencing, nor did he ever try to speak his belief into existence. Abraham acknowledged, rather than denied, the facts of his situation, but he didn't allow those facts to dissuade him about God's impossible promise. 

Grace is not an imposition of God, bound to produce faith in a passive, or even an unsuccessfully resisting receiver. Neither is faith an emergent quality of willful exertion persistently plied toward the achievement of a desire. Faith is that seed in everyone that God planted within so that anyone could respond to his promise when the Holy Spirit brought it their way. Faith isn't a foregone conclusion regarding the few to the exclusion of the many— it's a response of the "any," borne of their impression of the ability and character of God

Faith is a persuasion borne of encounter with the Holy Spirit.