"What is faith..." Hebrews 1:1 (TLB)

Faith is trusting in God when we cannot see the outcome.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have trusted God for different situations when there was no way I could see a path to walk through a situation, but God made a way for me.  It is this type of trust that really proves that God always has the outcome well in hand even if we can’t see it.

Faith in God is unique as it involves an impartation from Him for us to trust Him, whether it is by developing faith through the scriptures or by the spoken word of someone sharing their journey of faith, "So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" Romans 10:17 (NASB)

I have known people who cannot put their head around faith, it is to difficult for them to trust in a path or outcome that they cannot control.  I fully understand their point, faith isn’t an easy path to follow when one has been raised to believe in fact and reason.  Faith is a position that one takes based on trust, not upon reason. 

Faith in God is based on a relationship with Jesus Christ, not of just trusting the scriptures alone.  When we put our complete confidence in Jesus we trust Him to be faithful based on what He has promised and what He has already done, that trust moves from a passive head knowledge to an active inner-knowing, (an experiential relationship) is what is developed with Jesus to put Him to the test to prove that He is faithful and capable of meeting our needs. 

God takes great pleasure with us when we practice faith, it gives Him the opportunity to prove that He is interactive and not passive when it comes to His love and concern for us.  It is through Faith that many of the Fathers (the Patriarchs of Faith) in the past who have proven God to be faithful again and again because He always wanted a people whom He could interact with from the very beginning. 

It says in Genesis 3 it says that God walked with Adam in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening and conversed with him, which brought closeness and intimacy which communicated that God wanted to be involved with His creation on an intimate level and not from afar.  It was sin which brought separation in this relationship with God and stifled further communication.

 

From where Adam was provided for in the Garden of Eden, he was removed from His position and status with God from his where his needs were met into a place where he had to perform work to make a living for himself by providing his own food and clothing.  You could say that removing Adam from the garden of Eden set in motion the need for a redeemer to provide a way back to Eden.  Genesis 3:15 (AMPC)

Abraham heard God when he was as an old man, and trusted Him for what He had promised that he would bear many children as numerous as the grains of sand below his feet and as the many as the stars in the sky. When Abraham listened to his wife he tried to fulfill God’s promise through his own efforts, an Ishmael was born and no inherited blessing was offered to Ishmael because he was not conceived through faith but works. God fulfilled His promise through Abraham’s son Isaac which was by faith in the promise.  Hebrews 11:8-10 (TLB)

Faith is literally ‘hanging one's body on God’s promises’ no matter what the circumstances that are involved.  We surrender and put to death our desires, efforts, and machinations trying and make God’s promise happen for us, instead, we trust and rely upon the finished work of Jesus Christ to meet our needs from His infinite supply. God will demonstrate through faith in Him that He is able to meet us and supply all of our needs. (Philippians 4:19 (TLB)

Jesus gave us the truest example of faith by allowing His body to be hung on a cross, trusting the Father to answer His prayers and fulfill the promise of redemption through His sacrifice.  Faith is an active pursuit of believing and trusting in God who is not only reliable but can perform more than we could ever ask or think.  Ephesians 3:20 (TLB)

We have so many examples of faith recorded for us in scripture that there is no excuse for anyone not to trust God fully to meet their many needs. Romans 1:20 (TLB)

God is so faithful to us, that He would do anything to convince us of His love for us, and He did by sending the most precious thing to Him, His son Jesus to be our redeemer so that we could once again have that intimacy in relationship with our Father God.

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett