What is Biblical faith?

Last week we talked about circumstantial faith where our faith in God often depends on God’s activity or inactivity in our everyday life experiences. Today we are going to look at Biblical faith.

So what is Biblical faith? Is it a force? Is it a power? Is it something we use to get God’s attention? According to Scripture, faith is none of those things. Faith is actually very simple.

What is faith? Is it different than hope? How do you even measure faith? If things are going well with you and God, does that mean you have a lot of faith? If things are not going well in your life, if your prayers are not being answered, does that mean you don't have enough faith? Unfortunately, messages about faith today are very me centered. Do I have enough faith? Am I praying or believing enough? In reality, the object of our faith is much more important than the amount of faith we have. The object of our faith should be Jesus and what He did!

What is faith NOT? Faith is not a power or force. We have a tendency to believe that God is over there and we are over here and if we make a lasso out of faith we can “rope Him”. And because of our great faith, get Him to do things He was never going to do. It is not if we believe, we will receive. Faith is not a formula and once you get it figured out then God will start doing things for you. Prayer, prayer, prayer, go to church, prayer! Nope, not the right combination. Okay. Prayer, go to church, go to church, prayer, fast. Nope that didn’t work! Faith is not a formula.

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. Hebrews 11:1-3 NLT.

We tend to resist the biblical definition of faith because it takes faith out of our hands and puts God back in control. Much too often, we don't want God - we want a genie. But the goal of faith is not to get God to do what we want him to do; the goal of faith is to get us to live in accordance with the character and promises of God. Ultimately, faith comes down to trusting that God knows what he is doing.

Faith is what we hope far, so there is a difference in hope and faith. Faith is the hope taken one step further. Hope is “I think this is going to work out” but faith is being absolutely sure that something is going to work out. The bridge between hope and faith is the Promise of God!

In Hebrews 11:2 we get an illustration. “Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation.” This is how the faith of the Old Testament and the New Testament is defined. In verse 13, the writer of Hebrews wrote: “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it.” Somehow something happened to these ‘saints” of the Old testament that allowed them to not only be hopeful but to have confidence – their hope became faith.

“It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going.” Hebrews 11:8. This is from a story in Genesis, where God told man named Abram (Abraham) to “start walking in that direction and I will tell you when to stop! Just leave your family, your land and go, go, go, until I tell you to stop! I am going to take you somewhere new but I’m not telling you where.” The Bible says BY FAITH, He obeyed God.

God told Noah that “It is going to rain”. Noah said “God, I believe you. Boys, get to building”! God said to Abraham, “Go” and Abraham said “Family pack up. We’re moving.” These are acts of faith.

Let’s look at a story of faith from Luke. “In one of the villages, Jesus met a man with an advanced case of leprosy. When the man saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground, begging to be healed. “Lord,” he said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” Luke 5:12.

He came to Jesus saying with confidence saying “I don’t know if you are willing, but if you are willing, I know you can make a difference in my circumstances. But I am not presumptuous enough to assume that just because I asked that you have to. Just because I believed don’t mean you are forced to heal me. I believe you can and I hope you are willing. “Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared.” (Verse 13). The man came humbly and asked Jesus and didn’t try to talk him into it for whatever reason.

Our relationship with God should be that each day we can wake up and say, "If You never do anything else for me, You are still God. If you don’t answer another prayer, Jesus is still my Savior. If I don’t see you in the everyday circumstances of my life, that doesn’t change anything. My eternity is still secure! I can still worship you, because my faith is not based on the circumstances of life. And the great news is that I can bring everything to you. I can fall humbly on my face before You and say, God, I beg of you, I so badly need a job, I so badly need a friend, I so badly need relief from this ailment, or I so badly need to be free of my sin and my guilt. If you are willing, I have absolute perfect faith that you can do these things, IF you are willing.”

Sometimes God is willing at the moment, and sometimes God is willing later, and sometimes God is not willing at all because of something He knows that we don’t know. And, sometimes He is not willing for reasons we will never know. But, He is still God and we still aren’t! And we are still loved as His children. We are still His children not because He answered a prayer but because back in history, He sent His beloved Son to be our forever Savior. And this is always true whether he says He’s willing. Or He says wait. Or He says nothing and so nothing changes or sometimes things get worse.

This why sometimes we see people that have extraordinary faith and their circumstances are not great but they continue to believe in God. We say, “What’s up with this God? They have all this faith and, hey, they are doing so well!” But they continue to say everyday “if God is willing but so far He’s not willing but He is still God! Jesus is still my Savior, why wouldn’t I worship Him with both hands in the air? Why wouldn’t I sing at the top of my voice? Why wouldn’t I continue to follow Him and follow Him and follow Him? The scriptures say that many of the people who followed Him died without an answer to their prayers. They died before they saw the Promise. At least, we are living on “this side’ of Calvary and other the other side of His promise to send a Messiah. So why wouldn’t I trust Him? Because Biblical faith is not the ability to see God in the circumstances of life. Faith is confidence that He is who He says He is and He will do everything He promised. And if He says “No” to me, that’s His business, He’s God.”

But we want to shrink God down. We want to put Him in our pocket, back pack or purse and carry Him around with us. We want to have Him and pull Him out and say “meet my needs”, but whoa, back up God, I just want you part of the time. I don’t want you to take over until I get things the way I want them. Maybe not now but in a couple of more years I want you to take “control”. I know I need you but not right now!

This sounds all fine until we hit rock bottom and we do hit rock bottom. And then do you know what? We want a big old, created the universe, all powerful, God. One who is bigger than your circumstances! Not one who just has the world in His hands but has the world, like, on His fingernail! And do you know the good news – that is exactly who He is!!!! But He doesn’t do your bidding and He doesn’t do mine. Because He is God! But as big as He is, He knows my name, He says call me Father! And He says come to me with all your “stuff” because you believe I can do something about it. And that is all the faith I am looking for. We say, God, I believe you can if you are willing. And God says, “You know what, some days I am going to be so willing. Other days I am going to say I am not willing right now but will be willing later. And sometimes, I am not going to be willing at all.

But you can get up off your knees and love me and know that I love you because you are beyond circumstantial faith. You are trusting in the God that created the universe. The God that sent His Son to die for you and that loves you with all His heart. AND he has your best interest in mind, when you can see it and when you don’t. He has the ability to do anything He wants to, including the ability to say “no”.

As Christians we can come to God and ask for anything we want and we can believe He “can” answer our prayers and we can hope He will answer our prayers. He can do what you asked Him to do. But Faith is not a power or force. Faith is simply confidence that God is who He claims to be, as revealed in Scripture, and that He will do everything He’s promised to do. Faith is confidence that God loves us based on what Jesus did. Faith is that if God chooses to, He can say yes. Also, the confidence that if God says NO, He is still God!

Above lesson is based on a sermon by Andy Stanley.


For prayer requests, comments or to be included in our email ministry, email us at: whosoever@cottagehillbaptist.org. Also, Check out our “blog” at: http://thewhosoevers.blogspot.com/

What Is Your Faith “Propped Up” On?

How does faith really work? If your prayers aren't answered, is it because you didn't have enough faith? What does it mean to lose faith? Does your faith waver depending on your circumstances? Or is your faith supposed to be in something beyond your control, so that it isn't swayed by the circumstances of your life? Your faith is resting against something. Is it something that changes day to day, or does it endure through time?

Do you believe that most everyone falls out of faith at some point and most people fall out of faith many times in their lives?

Faith often comes and goes as our circumstances change. Sometimes it only takes a bad turn of events to challenge our beliefs.

When someone says they have lost their faith or lost their ‘religion” it usually boils down to one of two things – lifestyle decision or unexplainable circumstances. These two things do more to erode and chip away at our faith foundation, which was probably had weak to begin with, more than anything else.

What do we mean by a lifestyle decision? Let’s say you were raised in a Christian home where you were taught that cheating and being dishonest was a bad thing. You might have cheated and were dishonest but you still believed it was bad thing. This was part of your belief system. This was fine but then you got out of school, went to the “big city”, got a job and became part of a company. At this company cheating and being dishonest was a business practice. It might not have been really overt but this is just how business was done. Now you get this feeling inside. You were raised to believe this was wrong but it didn’t seem to bother anybody else. Now you had a dilemma. You have three choices: work here and feel guilty all the time, I can quit but that’s not a good option, or maybe what I have always believed isn’t true. Maybe in an environment like this being a little bit dishonest and cheating a little is not all that bad! Maybe I am being too hard on myself. Maybe my conscience is to ‘strict”. And over time, and most have experienced this, because of a lifestyle decision we began to change what we believed. You decided to stay in this company and become a part or it. Suddenly your beliefs have shifted. This is a lifestyle decision.

Another example of a lifestyle decision is you always said you'd never live with someone to "try it out" before getting married. Then you move to “the big city”, meet someone awesome and she/he wants to "try it out". Well you obviously want to keep this person around because they are so awesome, so you change your belief system and move in together to "try it out". Again you have shifted your beliefs to suit your lifestyle.

Now let’s look at unexplainable circumstances. You were raised in a Christian environment and you were taught that “God would never...” but then it seemed “that God did anyway”! You were raised to believe that “God would always....” but then it seemed that ‘God didn’t”! You were raised to believe that if you did “A, B, and C”, then you could believe or trust God to do “D, E, and F”. So you have done A, B, and C consistently but God didn’t do D, E, or F. And all of a sudden there is a life circumstance that doesn’t line up with your thinking about God and your faith is shattered. This happens all the time.

These two things basically boil down to something we can call "Circumstantial Faith".

This means our faith in God often depends on God’s activity or inactivity in our everyday life experiences. When our prayers are answered our faith in Him soars but when it appears that God is silent, it becomes difficult to have faith in Him. Or our faith may depend on how well it fits in with our lifestyle.

Many of us have this “circumstantial faith”. This kind of faith attempts to see God in the circumstances of our everyday life. Not all bad, because it is not uncommon to have certain events launch a person’s faith but we must not allow these events to be the foundation of our faith.

When God is doing all sorts of cool things in our lives we say: Yea God! Then when things are not quite so good we say “where is God? And when things get really, really bad we think "is there a God"? Our faith kind of goes on our ability to see God in our everyday life circumstances. So the defining factor of our faith depends on God showing up or not showing up on our time table.

So for example let's say you have a friend, family member, etc., who comes down with an illness. The prognosis doesn't look good so you pray for this person’s health. Well lo and behold a few days / weeks / months later they are "miraculously" cured. This of course instills a strong faith in you and God’s power. You spend the next weeks / months / years continuing down this path until one day something happens which causes you to doubt God.

Another ‘circumstance’ occurs in our lives – we lose our job, another friend gets ill or someone has some other issue or problem. We again prayed but God didn’t answer the way we thought he should and “BOOM” our faith in Him plummeted. Because you based your faith on the first event and then had a negative experience with the second event, your faith is now "shaken". This is because our faith was ‘propped up” on our ability to only see God in the everyday circumstances of our life. Circumstantial faith is very “fragile” because sometimes you see Him and sometimes you don’t. You are always trying figure out why circumstances happened because I did this or Momma said ‘so and so” or I didn’t pray hard enough. This is very fragile because things do happen that don’t fit into the framework of our view of God

We are horrible, yes horrible, at interpretation of events and circumstances in our lives. God speaks in many ways to us and we, being the smart humans we are, love to interpret these "signs" or "feelings". The problem is we typically interpret them as a positive thing for us. But when those same "things" go negative either now or later on down the road it causes us to lose our faith. Again because we based our faith on something or some event.

Whenever you adapt a faith foundation to fit your life, it will always end in tragedy.

So what is the foundation of our faith? The foundation of FAITH is a person. It is not an answer to a prayer, not something that happened to us when we were six, the foundation of our faith is a person - Jesus Christ. God sent Him into this world. Jesus walked on this earth; he lived a perfect life, predicted his death and resurrection, was crucified, buried and rose from the dead. He was then seen by hundreds of people who said: “I saw this happen” and they gave their lives to him and told people what they saw. As Christians, if God never answered another prayer, if God never showed up in our circumstances, if God didn’t do anything for us lately or ever again, zilch was quiet from now on, we still should wake up everyday with extraordinary confidence in God because of what he did for us back in history, back at the Cross. Because Jesus came into this world to die for our sins, which is God’s way of saying throughout the ages that “I LOVE YOU”, YOU ARE IMPORTANT TO ME!!!! We can go through each day of our lives with our faith based on what he did for us back in history and not have our faith propped up on circumstantial faith.

So what is your faith built on?


This lesson is based on a sermon by Andy Stanley


For prayer requests, comments or to be included in our email ministry, email us at: whosoever@cottagehillbaptist.org. Also, Check out our “blog” at: http://thewhosoevers.blogspot.com/