FAITH

Romans 10:17 "Faith comes from hearing and that hearing from the Word of God being declared."

Faith is not some quantifiable substance. Faith is a believing response to something you have heard from what to trust is a reliable source. I have "faith" in the peddle just to the left of the accelerator on my car because the vehicles manual tells me that if I step on it, the car will slow to a stop. The manual calls it the brake. I believe the manufacturer knows what the different parts of the car are for and how they work.

I act on that belief, that faith, when coming up to a red traffic light. I step in it to stop. There is NO faith if there is no word given to you for you to respond to with a "Yes."

Hebrews 11:1 "Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see."

God has spoken in many ways to His people through His prophets. In these last days, He has spoken through His eternal Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus spoke of things still yet to come, but because He spoke of those end-times things, we can have full assurance that these things He spoke will come to pass. Having heard His voice through apostolic eyewitness testimony, because He died and rose again according to His own prediction, we know that ANYTHING He has said is reliable. We can put the full weight of our lives on what He has said, believing Him, having exercise faith.

It is BECAUSE God has spoken that we can have faith, for faith is an active believing in what God has said. His Word activates faith in me. Where there is no Word from God, there can be no true faith. Faith is not wistful thinking. It's not, "Well, I hope it happens." When God says that I am forgiven because I believe what He has declared about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a fact of history and is His ONLY means of rescuing me from sin, eternal death, hell and the grave, I can believe and receive His forgiveness. I don't believe in order to make it true. I believe it because it is true. 

God has declared that if anyone is now in Christ Jesus, having New Life at work in them, they are a new creation; the old way of living in self-reliance, being alienated from God and under His just wrath and judgement have passed away. ALL things have become new, and this is the work of GOD who has reconciled us to Himself by the blood of Jesus' sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. A new heart and a new spirit have been imparted by God to us, replacing our stone-like hearts and dead spirit. His life is now being lived in us to do His daily work of implementing in us the reality of the new birth and salvation given to us by His grace through the instrumentality of faith, that is itself a gift from God.

"No matter how many promises God has made, they find their YES in Christ Jesus." 2 Corinthians 1:20

In Jesus Christ, all of the promises God has made in His Word are fulfilled that we might be redeemed. We can read through the Word of God, the Bible, and shout, "AMEN!" (it is so) in response to every eternal promise found there. God makes these things real in our lives because of New Life working in us. And we respond in worship, praise, prayer and Holy Spirit empowered daily, obedient living.

Genesis 15:6 "Abraham believed God and it was reconned to him as righteousness."

Abraham believed what God had told him, what God had revealed to him, what God had shown him. Abraham's faith was his affirmative response to what God had said. He said, in essence, "Lord God, I believe what You have told me, and I will live out of that being eternally true."

Folks talk about their need of more faith. That is actually not true. When Jesus Christ came to live His life in a believer, He came with all He is: His righteousness, His nature, His salvation, His wisdom, His truth, His eternal Power, and even His faith. Galatians 2:20 states that the life we now live, we live by the faith OF the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. The words "by the faith OF the Son of God" are in the genitive tense in Greek, the tense of possession to tell us WHOSE faith we live by. If Jesus Christ is indeed Life within us by the Holy Spirit, you can be assured that He left no part of who He is out when He became Life within you, Christian. 

It is in the exercising of our faith that our faith becomes stronger just as lifting weights makes muscles stronger. Working out does not give your more than two biceps; it just makes what you have stronger. Believe God, exercise your faith and trust in the Word of the Lord God even when you can't see a thing with your five senses that could verify a thing. You can walk by faith, follow Him believing that He who began a good work in you WILL bring that work to completion by the Day of Christ. 

That is the strong reason to spend daily time reading, meditating in, affirming out loud, praying and setting your mind on the Word of God written. The Psalmist declared, "Your Word have I hid in my heart, O God, so that I might not sin against You." Psalm 119:11 Read it, hear it, and exercise your faith believing it into acting on it.