By Nathan Householder

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

You believe that Jesus is your savior and you believe that heaven and hell both exist. In the natural, no sane person would believe such things. But that is what is so unique about faith. You don’t have to see or feel something to have faith in it. This is what having faith is.

Faith is what comes between God’s promise and the fulfillment of that which is promised.

2 Peter 1:3-4 Seeing that His divine power has granted us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 

Rom 1:17 But the righteous man shall live by faith.
The bible does not say that the righteous man will have faith, but rather it says the righteous man shall LIVE by faith. It is a daily lifestyle to choose to have faith and to choose to trust in God.

James 2:26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also is faith without works is dead.

What happens when the doctor tells you that you only have days to live? It is during these times that you will decide if you will live by faith or by sight. Every day we have to choose to live by faith. Every day we have to choose to walk in obedience to His word and believe that what what He promises will come to pass. It is easy to be overcome by what we see happening around us. It was Peter’s faith that allowed him to walk on water with Jesus. Peter sunk when he became fearful of the storm around him. It is only when we are in the middle of the storm are we faced with the decision of where our faith lies.

Speech always follows faith. Without speech, faith is incomplete. This is a golden principle that we see in 2 Cor 4:13: It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.”With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak. This is why God speaks. Without speech, God cannot infect us with faith. We who have believed what God has spoken, must in turn speak for faith to be complete. This is why Romans 10:10 tells us to believe in our heart and confess with our mouth.

You cannot attain to the fullness of Christ without faith. Faith is part of our foundation, infact it is built upon it. Just as we say that a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link, so to is the foundation on which we build ouselves. If we are lacking in faith, our whole foundation is lacking. Just as the man who built his house on the sand, so too is a foudation lacking in faith.

By Titto Thomas

Nathan did a terrific job of what faith was in the previous article. We have seen that the object of faith is GOD! And God wants us to use the faith He gives us to touch Him. Now we all know what happens to people who are touched by God!
 
Faith or to be specific, what the bible calls faith, comes from God. God is at the heart of it and we have heard of people who have met with this faith. People gave up their lives, got eaten by lions, and turned this world upside down. In the Fox’s Book of Martyrs there is a particular story that touched me. It tells of a young woman whose baby was held out to her as she was about to be thrown to the lions. Her father holding the baby pleaded with her to renounce Jesus for the baby’s sake. This woman kissed the baby and walked to arena to be torn apart by lions. All these people did these things because they had a confidence in God that came from God.
 
Therefore let us look at how this kind of faith comes to us.
 
Romans 10:17 –”Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God”.
 
The Greek term used for ”word” in the above verse is not ‘logos’ but ‘rhema‘. Rhema means THE SPOKEN WORD. Another way to put it: it is the word which speaks to you. Now refer Hebrews 1:1 & 2 “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through prophets at many different times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son”. Faith begins with the fact that GOD has spoken. Faith for receiving that word comes riding on the Word!
 
To put it plainly, you don’t get faith by sitting in a church on a Sunday, faith comes out of a revelation of the Word of God. You MUST HEAR FROM GOD HIMSELF ON WHO HE IS AND WHO YOU ARE IN HIM!  
 
When you were saved, there was a question that you knowingly or unknowingly answered. It is the same question that Jesus asked Peter: Who do you say that I am? If we look we can first see that there was revelation first – God showed you/God opened your eyes. What happened to you after this? Romans 10:10 expounds on it - “That if you confess with your mouth That Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him up from the dead, you will be saved.” This was how faith worked in our lives when we got saved. God by the Holy spirit helped us through faith to believe that God raised Jesus from  the dead and faith always carrying actions with it made us declare by confession that HE INDEED IS LORD! Now take a look at Colossians 2:6-7 Just as you received Christ, continue to live in him…strengthened in faith as you were taught. So you see, the key to walking in him starts with learning how you received Him.
 
Faith always carries with it actions…mind you not viceversa! Faith caused us to speak out once we had believed. There is no speaking out (confession) without believing! (Matthew 12:34 and 2 Corinthians 4:13). We are deceived if we think that somehow speaking out will cause us to believe. If that were true, confession would become the object of faith, but as we have seen before Jesus is the object. Thus we first see Jesus as Lord over every situation and thing and once we believe that, we speak out!
 
Faith centers around a revelation of Jesus. And faith in action sees us constantly declaring His Deity and the great works He has done! So faith comes by hearing from God about Him, not from God about the weather!
 
To make the above points clearer let me take you to the Old Testament where this same pattern is laid out. Isaiah 53 & 54. To put it in context, the end of Isaiah 52 is talking about the suffering of Jesus and Chapter 53 comes along and makes this proclamation “WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?” and the rest of the chapter expounds on this. This comes as a precursor to Chapter 54. “Shout for joy Oh barren woman” is how this chapter starts. See, the same pattern… You first believe and then out of a belief comes a confession. Isaiah 54 clearly explains the nature of that confession. It is not a mumble that goes “Yeah yeah, I know Jesus is LORD” but the first sign of true faith is a shout of joy. That confession which comes out of a belief in God cannot be smothered…IT ERUPTS!  
 
To conclude, true faith in God has to do with WHO HE IS and how it comes is only by Him out of revelation of the word of GOD. God has spoken and you have heard, now speak out that which God has spoken as that is pattern of the working of faith. It started with your salvation experience and that pattern continues on in this journey of faith. In the next post Nathan will talk about your walk of faith in a very practical way, showing faith as a way of life!

By Nathan Householder

What is faith?

Faith is something that we are born with and develop over time. For some, faith comes easy, but for others faith is far more difficult to attain.  Many of us practice faith without even knowing it. Every time you sit in a chair, you have faith that the chair is going to hold you up.  Every time you take a breath of air, you have faith that there is going to be something for you to breath.  Every day you believe that the sun will rise and set just as it always has. I guess faith is pretty simple after all.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

You believe that God exists although you’ve never seen Him. You trust the Word of God, although you never met the men who wrote it. You believe that Jesus Christ will save you from a hell and spend eternity with Him in heaven, but you’ve never seen either of these places. THIS my friend is what faith is.

Let’s now examine faith from a spiritual sense.

Faith is not just a word, but a lifestyle. Rom 1:17 But the righteous man shall live by faith.

There may be times when faith is not always easy. Mainly because we are creatures living in a physical world, striving to reconnect with Christ. It is far easier to trust what we see than to trust what we do not see.

Faith comes to us as a gift from God. However, this faith must be exercised. Just like any muscle in our body, if our faith is not exercised it will wither away. Unfortunately, the only way to strengthen our faith is to test our faith. This is why God allows us to go through trials and tribulations. God wants to know where we stand in our faith, and to allow us to see what areas in our life we need to work on.

It is easy to say to someone who is going through something “just have faith brother”, but it is totally different when YOU are the one having your faith tested. There are times when we will go through rough spots, but that does not mean we are weak in faith. NEVER doubt your faith. When you go through times of unbelief, just tell God “I believe, but please help my unbelief”.

Faith also comes to some as a spiritual gift.

1 Corinthians 12:9

To another, faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one spirit.

We see here that the Gift of Faith is among all the rest of the spiritual gifts. But what about those people who say “well brother, I just don’t have the gift of faith. I guess I will never have complete faith”. If you are among those who say this about faith or any other gift for that matter, you are wrong. Just because faith is not your primary gifting, does not mean you do not have faith. You just don’t have the GIFT of faith. Faith is present in everyone. But there is nothing wrong with desiring the gift of faith or even asking God to give you that gift. He just might do it if you truly desire it.

James 1:17 (NKJV)

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning

Psalms 84:11

No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.

Faith is foundational to Christianity. Without faith, we have absolutely nothing. Everything we read in the Word of God is based solely upon faith. You could possibly even say that faith is the greatest gift of all because all of the other spiritual gifts depend upon faith. We all have a measure of faith, but we must all work at strengthening our faith. A Christian without faith is not a Christian at all, but rather a member of religious organization.