Ya Gotta Have Faith

10/30/2020

Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please Him.”

Faith – firm belief in something for which there is no proof (Merriam-Webster)

So, how vital is faith to my life? It is like the air I breathe, for without it I am not truly alive. If I did not hold tightly onto the hope of the Gospel, or the teaching and wisdom of the Old Testament, I would be lost, for all a lack of faith brings is hopelessness. Currently, in this crazy year of 2020, more and more of us are having to believe and find hope in something or go mad.

Hebrews 11:1 is an often quoted verse: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” You can find this verse all over things like home décor and shirts, but is the meaning really internalized on a spiritual level? People have faith in all kinds of things: medicine, science, other people, technology, etc., often without being able to see or fully understanding. I cannot see a wireless connection, but when I use my computer or phone I know it is there.

Faith in God, however, is a vastly different kind of faith; it requires complete trust in Someone only known to me through scripture and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I cannot turn on a gadget or ingest a pill to prove that my God exists, although there certainly is the argument that He is the ultimate Creator, not just of the world but all that exists therein. We, after all, were created in His image, and it is men and women who have used their God given gifts and intellect to discover and create such wonders. Of course, some people “believe” that humans in fact have the capacity to reach godhood. This, again, is not something proven. In fact, I would argue many a cult leader that has tried actually disproves this notion.

There are also people who will argue that faith in a Savior of the world goes against common sense and reason, but it is no more unreasonable than anything else we put our faith in. The definition of faith, as seen above, speaks of there being no proof, but I would perhaps add the word “tangible” to that definition. My life is proof of a Heavenly Father, as I am sure yours is. There have been too many experiences in my life that would be unexplainable without acknowledging God’s existence. I have experienced healing, and seen healing in the lives of others as well. I have seen even the hardest hearts embittered against God change. I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit so strongly in prayer that time seems to stand still. Do I have tangible proof that any of these things relate back to God? I do not. Could there be any other explanation? There cannot.

The heading in my Bible for the first part of Hebrews 11 is “Faith in Action.” Reading the accounts of great leaders of the faith, and that of the entire book of God breathed scripture, I would argue is also my proof. Many people who have interacted with the Holy Scriptures with the intent to disprove them actually turn to God, for this is how God speaks to us. It is where faith takes shape and becomes personal. Chambers writes, “To turn faith into a personal possession is a fight always, not sometimes. God brings us into circumstances in order to educate our faith, because the nature of faith is to make its object real. Until we know Jesus, God is a mere abstraction, we cannot have faith in Him; but immediately we hear Jesus say—‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,’ we have something that is real, and faith is boundless. Faith is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the Spirit of Jesus.”

Remember this truth about faith, dear reader, particularly during these difficult and uncertain times. People, ideals, philosophies, and things that we place our faith in will fail us, but putting faith in God never will.