What is faith? There are men and women of great faith. Some have the gift of faith. Jesus is faithful. It was by grace you were saved through faith. If you had but the faith of a mustard seed you could move mountains. I have recently begun listening to a sermon by Neville Johnson and it is kind of wrecking my thoughts on faith. First of all, we haven’t even finished the sermon. It is taking us about 3 nights to get through it because the content is so rich and through out my day I cannot stop thinking about this concept. So here are my thoughts on faith. Most of these were downloaded to me on my walk from campus to my car, where I literally borderline sprinted the last few steps to get my hands on a pencil and paper to record these down…
Hebrews 11 is the favorite hall of faith passage of the bible where we literally get a definition of what faith is. I like the King James Version best in this instance, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is a substance. It is the confidence of hope. Faith is that heart’s desire or “calling” that the Lord downloads into his followers. The Lord distributes faith according to his will. It is conceived in His mind and spoken into us just as He first designed and created this earth. The Lord alone speaks faith into you. There is nothing you can do except to receive the gift he is giving you. Faith is one of the gifts distributed by the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12.
Faith is first born in the spiritual realm. Have you ever felt that assurance that although your life situation had not changed, a peace fell that let you know everything was going to be ok? It is a prophetic word spoken into your life that caused your spirit to rest in the fact that God has already taken care of everything. Your very salvation was founded on faith. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). God put faith in you so that you may believe in His promises. From that faith you were able to “confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,” (Romans 10:9). We are able to take steps of obedience in that assurance that God keeps his promises. During this entire World Race fundraising process, the Lord has given me the faith that the funds will come in. I feel as if it is already a done deal in the spiritual realm, I am just waiting to walk it out in the physical.
But does this mean that I can just sit back, kick my feet up and pass the responsibility on? Not at all! James 2:17 says, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” We must respond. If the Lord puts a calling or a ministry on our hearts and in our lives and we choose not to obey, then that faith is not cultivated. The spiritual breath does not become physical life. Our God is a God of ACTION.
Guard your heart!
Once faith enters into our hearts, we must guard it. Keep anything from creeping in and destroying the truth of the promise of what God has placed there. Thoughts are a different story. Thoughts flit in and out of our minds in seconds, which is why we must take our thoughts captive and give them to Christ before we dwell on the doubt and let them sink into our hearts (2 Corinthians 10:5). The devil comes like a thief to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). He plants doubt that steals the very purposes of God for our lives. That is why we are given the armor of God to protect ourselves from his attack. Ephesians 10:16 says to take up the shield of faith to protect yourself from the arrows of the evil one.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” (NLT). What you let into your heart directs your path. The King James version says “for out of it spring the issues of life.” How often does doubt take root and become bitterness, and how often to we let that bitterness control our very actions. In Matthew 14 when Peter gets out of the boat and walks on water towards Jesus, faith was place into his mind for him to ask the Lord to tell him to come out on the water. He stepped out in action and came towards Jesus, but fear crowded his mind. He let it sink to his heart and therefore began to sink himself. Jesus’s response was “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
So then, what do we fill our hearts with? Once the Lord speaks faith into your life: guard it. Walk in a fear of the Lord. Fill your heart with his love and his righteousness. Proverbs 2 says, “store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding.” Hold onto God’s promises. Filter the thoughts that you allow to resonate within you. Receive the gift of faith and do not be afraid to step out in it.
I love the french translation of Hebrews 11 from La Bible du Semeur:
La foi est une façon de posséder ce qu'on espère, c'est un moyen d'être sûr des réalités qu'on ne voit pas.
Faith is a way of owning/possessing what one hopes for, it is a means/medium to be sure of the realities that one cannot see.
Faith is assurance and confidence that what the Lord says will come to pass. It gives us insight into the realities that cannot be seen in the physical realm, but have already come to pass in the spiritual.
