What faith isn’t:
1. Faith isn’t a force or power
Sometimes we think that if we just have enough faith we can force God to do something that
he wasn’t going to originally do. If we just believe hard enough then what we want will happen. Our prayers get answered when we just believe as hard as we can. Maybe you’ve even heard someone tell you, “You just need more faith.”
Vending machine God: If I insert the right amount of faith into the machine then out pops the answer to my prayers. This concept of faith is not found in the Hebrew Bible of the New Testament scriptures.
2. Faith is not a secret code
We think that faith is something that some people get and others don’t. That there’s some
secret to having true faith and we’re missing out. We see people who have great faith and we
idolize those people and we put them on a pedestal, dreaming of having faith like theirs.
Somehow they found a secret verse or discovered a prayer that we don’t know but for some
reason they get it and we don’t.
3. Faith is not hope
“Christianity is a mind numbing, lack of experience faith”
Faith is not blind, it’s not uninformed. We think that we have to become ignorant and and let go of reason and evidence becoming people who believe blindly. God doesn’t want us to have an ignorant faith. Hope: wanting something to happen with no evidence that it’ll happen. “I hope for a promotion, a raise, a spouse, a girlfriend/boyfriend, a date…” God wants hope to turn to faith.
What is Faith?
Hebrews 11:1-2
“Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen: it gives us
assurance about things we cannot see. Through faith, the people in the days of
old earned a good reputation.”
What turns hope into faith: Confidence. But where does Confidence come from?
From Evidence. Hope so turns into know so when the person with the authority
promises me that my hope so will turn to a know so.
We don’t believe in God because of faith, we believe in God because of what he
has done for us and that gives us confidence. What gives me the ability to live a
life of faith? Trusting in what God has already done for me.
Here’s how I define faith: Its confidence in who God is and that he will do what
he has promised he will do.
An easy way to remember what is faith: Faith=Belief + Trust. It’s knowledge
followed by action.
James 2:14-17. Our faith is proven true by the corresponding action.