Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the
greatest of these is love (1 Corin.13:13, NLT).
God loves us. Without God’s love, there is no faith; there
is no hope. And without His love, our relationship and faith in Him is naught.
Because God says He Himself is love (1 Jn.4:9), without the existence of God, we
can’t have faith in Him and how then can we hope in Him? For this reason,
without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb.11:6). Faith is the basis of
our foundation in Christ. Hebrews 11:6 writes that anyone who comes to God must
believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. When
you have faith in God, you believe and acknowledge His existence in your life,
you also believe that He loves you with an everlasting love, because He is
love. Here, God teaches us that in Him, faith and love goes hand-in-hand.
Remember God also says that without faith it is impossible to please Him and He
rewards those who earnestly seek Him. God takes delight in those who seek Him
with all their hearts. What reward does God promise? From Matthew 5:11 and
Jeremiah 29:13-14, when our hearts are pure and we seek Him wholeheartedly, He
reveals Himself to us that we may know Him better. The Greek meaning of
‘knowing God’ is to know Him experientially. To ‘see God’ in Matthew 5:11 has
the same meaning – to know God experientially. This builds up our faith in Him.
Our faith is built on two levels: first is the Biblical knowledge of God (His
Word) and second is our spiritual experience and encounters with God. The
journey of our faith is both rational and emotional – this is the nature of our
God. God has wisdom beyond understanding and His love for us through Jesus
Christ shows that our God has feelings and emotions too! Now where does hope
come in? Hebrews 11:1 writes that faith is being sure of what we hope for and
certain of what we do not see. There is hope in Christ Jesus because He lives,
and because He lives, we can have eternal life with God (Jn.3:16). This is our
hope in God, our confidence of God’s goodness in the land of the living (Ps.
27:13), which is eternity with our King! And now we know that in Christ, faith,
hope and love are inseparable and they remain.
Many of us question what is faith? And some of us find it
hard to always have faith in God. The minute our problems come in like the
waves, they hit us and we feel feeble and weak and doubts begin to sink in.
Well I’ve got good news for us! God promises us in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 that
His grace will sustain us and He will make us stronger in our weakness. It’s
alright to be weak in God’s presence, in fact, when we are weak, then we are
strong. I have to emphasize though that this weakness in God is not coming into
God’s presence in defeat. On the contrary, because we are humans, we are weak,
and so we learn to cling upon and revel in God’s promises. This is faith! And
this is when God’s power bursts out from your life!
The Lord showed me different dimensions of faith as He led
me to Hebrews 11:
1.
To fear the Lord is to have faith in God;
to have faith in God is to fear the Lord
Faith is being sure of what we hope for
(v1), and that is being confident of God’s goodness in the land of the living
(Ps27:13). “How great is Your goodness, which you have stored up for those who
fear You” (Ps31:19). The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and God
Himself gives us wisdom and understanding. As in Proverbs 2, we must accept and
store up God’s commands and words in us and ask the Lord for His wisdom in our
daily lives. In every circumstance that you’re in, have faith in God, just
trust and believe that He will make all things new. You’ve got to be sure and
be confident that God has stored up so much goodness in eternity and that is
when we return to be with Jesus forever! That is the reward and the amazing
promise God has for us at the end of the race. Faith in God can be described as
our faithfulness to Him. When we remain faithful to God in all we do and say,
He protects our ways (Prov2:8, Heb.11:7).
The devil can’t harm us, our problems
can’t drown us, people can’t bring us down, unless we allow them to, unless we
make a decision in your heart saying, “God I give up, there is no hope in You.
I don’t want to trust You. I don’t want to have faith in You. I don’t feel like
You love me anymore. I don’t want to walk in Your ways any longer, I’m gonna do
my own thing, walk my own path and be the lord of my own life.” This isn’t the
faith that pleases God, this isn’t the faith that the ancients were commended
for. Rather, give your life, your all to Jesus. Hold on to Him, hold on to His
ways and simply look ahead to the prize that God has prepared heavenward in
eternity.
2.
Faith leads to obedience; Obedience reaps
greater faith
Has it ever crossed your mind how
one moment Jesus prayed “take this cup from me” and the next he prayed “Yet not
what I will, but what You will”? (Mark 14:36)
Jesus was obedient to the Father
and He chose to deny himself, take up his cross and follow God’s will for him.
Though Jesus knew he would be resurrected and that God had a bigger plan, he
was a perfect God and perfect man – he experienced fear as all man would. Yet,
Jesus clung on to what is ahead and onto God’s Kingdom plan on earth (which is
salvation through Jesus Christ), and this is the faith in God Jesus
demonstrated and that we must learn. His faith in every single promise of God
and every Word of God was expressed in his obedience to death. And as he
obeyed, he had greater faith. This faith in God allowed God’s strength and
courage to overpower Jesus’ fear. After Jesus prayed, he became courageous and
willed to the Father (John 18:8-11).
When we take up our faith in God,
it means that we fix our eyes on Jesus – the author and perfector of our faith
(Heb. 12:2). God is love, and His love is perfect. Doesn’t scripture say that
perfect love casts out all fear? (1 Jn.4:18) Doesn’t it also say that every
word of God is flawless (Ps.18:30)? Since Jesus is the way, the truth and the
life (Jn. 14:6), and the word became flesh (Jn.1:14), Jesus is the Word, the
way and He is love. And because He is perfect and flawless, when we fix our
eyes on Him and hope in Him, we allow His perfect love to break away every fear
in our hearts that dampens our faith (Isaiah 40:31). And through this, we have
the strength and courage to obey the Lord (Heb. 11:8-10, 17-19, 23,27, 31-38).
It’s all about Jesus!
3.
Faith encompasses righteousness in God
In all we do, whether speech or
action, we always have to make a conscious decision to be set apart for God or
to conform to the world. Hebrews 11:7 demonstrates that righteousness comes by
faith.
Noah and Moses made a choice to be
set apart (Heb.11:7, 24-26), hence it was credited to them as righteousness
that comes by faith. However, we can’t be made righteous on our own. We are
found righteous only through Jesus Christ – the author and perfector of our
faith. Hence as we clothe ourselves with the righteousness of Christ, we need
to spend time meditating on the word of God that we may know the commands of
God (Prov. 2:10-15).
Now, how can we have faith in God? Faith doesn’t stem from ourselves, rather it
comes from revelation given by the Holy Spirit (1 Corin.4:13). We need to be
filled with the Holy Spirit and in order to do that we need to ask in Jesus’
Name and receive it by faith. Know that when you pray for something like that,
the Holy Spirit is working even if you might not feel the ground shaking or
electric currents through your body!
Faith in God means obeying without questions or having to
know the full picture (Heb.11:8), it means acknowledging God’s faithfulness
(Heb.11:11). It also means being sure of what we hope for at the end of this
race (Heb.11:16); it is faith that God can work the impossible, being certain
of what we do not see (Heb.11:1,17-19). Finally, faith is a choice. God never
promised us that we wouldn’t go through suffering, rather it is through
sufferings that we develop hope at the end (Rom.5:3-5). We need to persevere in
our sufferings and know that hope doesn’t disappoint us because of God’s love
(Heb. 10:36, Rom.5:5).
Got it? Or rather, done it?
