FAITH MEANS RELYING ON GOD
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:6 NLT)
Anytime we demonstrate faith, we’re relying on something. When you sit in a chair, you’re relying on the chair’s manufacturer to produce something that will hold you up. When you’re on the freeway, you’re relying on every other driver around you.
Faith in God means we rely on him and depend on His reliability. Having faith means realizing that God is bigger, greater, and better than me – and He loves me greatly.
Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death” (NLT). That's the problem with relying on yourself. We’re often wrong. Human intuition is not always reliable. In fact, it’s just good enough to make us think we’re right – even when we’re not.
Genuine faith is relying on God's direction and on who he is. God is reliable. He knows what you need, and he wants to meet those needs. Unfortunately, we think we know better. We think we have a better plan. We want to use our logic and get to the answer in a way that makes us look good – and doesn’t require risk. But God wants us to grow, so he takes us a different way.
Many times in Scripture, God asks us to do what doesn’t make sense to our logic. For example, Mark 10:43 says, “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant”(NLT). To most people, that verse doesn’t make sense; you’d think great people would have others serving them. Jesus says it’s the other way around – the great people are the ones serving others. I need to trust what God says about greatness, not what I think.
God also says we’re to honor Him by giving the first 10 percent of our income back to him. By our reason, that doesn’t make much sense to us. But we’re to lean on God’s understanding, not our own.
Because we trust him, we obey what he says – even if it doesn’t make sense to us.
WHAT IS FAITH IN GOD?
God will give you strength to make it through if you have faith in Him. Faith is placing your complete trust in Jesus Christ, believing He will do what He says. Abraham's faith should be a model for all Christians.
So how do we find out what faith is? We should always first go to the Bible to see if It offers us a definition of any term or concept under consideration. In Heb 11:1 we indeed read a Biblical definition of faith: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen". This verse tells us that faith is a conviction that we have regarding something that allows us to be able to act on it as if it were assured of happening. But where does such assurance come from? A lot of people have the above scripture memorized but then when you ask the question about where does faith come from, you either get a "I don't really know" or somebody saying that it comes from within with the implication that faith is something we develop ourselves.
Now let us go to the Bible and see if It tells us where faith comes from. Heb 12:2 says "...Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith". And Rom 12:3 says " ... God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” These two verses clearly tell us that faith is not something that we do or a presence of mind that we develop, but that faith is a gift from God. Rom 10:17 says " ... faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ." So faith is a gift from God that we receive from the word of Christ, which in this dispensation we get from the Bible rather than from a burning bush. So in His time He will allot faith to us as needed from the word of the Bible. In 2 Cor 10:15 we see that faith can grow, so as we study the Bible God can add to our faith.
FAITH IS NOT THE SAME AS BELIEF
Rom 9:30-32 tells us that righteousness is by faith. Rom 10:6-10 again tells us that the origin of righteousness is faith, and since all Christians should say that salvation is not by works then we must also say that faith is not by our works lest we should boast. Matt 21:21 is an oft-quoted scripture but read it carefully. It says that if we have faith and doubt not then everything that we ask in prayer, believing, we will receive. How do we get what we pray for? First it has to be based on faith and we have seen the origin of faith is God and not us. So first God has to tell us something will come to pass. Then we act on that faith with a believing heart and we can do so without doubt for God has said so, then the event will come to pass. This type of input is in seen in the Old Testament when God first told His people that the battle had been won, and all they had to do was act it out. I do not mean that God talks to us today apart from the Bible. We are in a different dispensation. The revelation from God is complete with Revelation so do not expect to hear some voice telling you that you are going to get that particular job. God does reveal in His Word all that we need to know to be able to ask according to His will.
FAITH IS THE CAUSE AND BELIEF IS THE EFFECT
The above scripture also contrasts faith and belief. Thus faith is not the same as belief. But we must have faith and believe so what does this mean? It means that we must be firmly rooted in our faith. Having faith means that God has given us His insight into something and we are NOT TO DOUBT it but believe that this faith is of God. Again I must state that this insight comes from the Bible’s revelation of the character of God and not from any other source. We are not to be blown about like a leaf in the wind, getting some faith from God and then getting it mixed up with something else like New Age philosophy or something else. Sometimes we want something so badly for ourselves that it is very difficult for us to believe that God does not want it for us also. So when the faith comes from God about that situation, we don't want to believe it. But if we have faith and believe, we will receive. This means that we will be perfectly aligned with the will of God and not with our will. It is easy to get cause and effect mixed up and that is what happens with a lot of people regarding faith and belief. We can believe because we have faith that came from God. Without faith from God, we cannot believe. Faith is the cause and believe is the effect. A great definition of faith is the empowering of God. God empowers us to believe, trust, repent, hope, etc.
SO HAVING HUGE FAITH or 100% IS DEFINITELY NOT BEING PROUD!! It is a gift from GOD and is not coming of our own control.
When is our faith completed? Eph 4:11-16 tells us that God gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers in order to build up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man. This is talking about what we call sanctification. God provides justification by faith, sanctification by faith, and finally glorification. When we stand before Him in our glorification (Luke 21:36), then will our faith be finally completed or fulfilled.
Faith is the enabling power of God. I really like this as a working definition for it totally eliminates a man-based origin and applies well to all of the above. We then see that
• Justification is by the enabling power of God.
• Sanctification is by the enabling power of God.
• Glorification is by the enabling power of God.
부유한노예좋은사람, 많이사랑해영~ㅇ.ㅇ 자아를 다녀와요~ 괜찮아요..^^ 건강 조심하시구요, 아프지 마세용~
감사합니다. 건강 조심하시구요, 아프지 마세요.
