Sweet Sisters,
I have been thinking a lot about faith. I’ve quoted Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”. I’ve marveled about how Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness.
The last few days I’ve been asking myself “but what is faith?”.
Paul and I teach a Bible class to a group of guys who have a pretty limited understanding of the Bible and the terminology that we tend to throw around thinking everyone knows what we are talking about. Our study this week was from Ephesians 6 where Paul talks about the armor of God. He says to “pick up the shield of faith which will protect us from the darts of the devil. Before we could teach how the shield protects us, we had to make sure they understood what faith was.
How would you define faith? Can we use the words trust or belief in the place of the word faith?
Webster’s dictionary defines faith as a “strong belief or trust in someone or something”. Have you ever had the experience of putting your trust in someone or something and ended up heartbroken or disappointed? I think we all have.
The Bible calls us to put our trust in God; to believe, have faith that He is who He says He is and that He can do what He says He can do. Faith is not about what I can do but about what God can do. My level of faith is directly linked to my perception of God.
How big is your God?
In Luke 5:1-11 we read of an encounter Peter (Simon) has with Jesus. Peter and company have fished all the previous night and caught nothing. They are cleaning up and putting stuff away when Jesus says to Peter, “Take your boat out to deep water and throw your nets back in the water and you will catch some fish”. Peter is tired and may know little about who this man is making such a request of him, but he says, “because you say so, I will do it”. Peter and company take the boat back out into deep water, throw their nets out and catch more fish than they ever dreamed possible.
Faith is responding to God’s call even when we don’t understand or have any clue that it is going to work out.
How do we know that God is faithful and won’t disappoint us? Our Faith is grounded in God’s word so let’s look at some scriptures.
1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us of all righteousness.”
1 Thessalonians 5:24, “The one who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.”
2 Thessalonians 3:3, “But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.”
Deuteronomy 7:9, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; He is the faithful God.”
Psalm 36:5, “Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.”
God’s love and faithfulness is greater and more powerful than we can comprehend but because we cannot understand it we tend to put Him in a box and not allow Him to work in our lives in the way He wants to.
In her book, Armor of God, Priscilla Shirer quotes her father’s definition of faith
“Faith is acting like it is so, even when it is not so that it might be so, simply because He says so”.
AW Tozer says,” Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith.”
We ended our Bible study on faith with our group of guys with Paul teaching them this children’s song complete with hand motions. “My God is so big, so strong and so mighty; there’s nothing my God cannot do.”
Sweet Sisters, now that is a definition of faith you can live by!!! Debbie ❤