Faith, Our Strong Foundation Series

FAITH,OUR STRONG FOUNDATION

Hebrews 11:1-3

My brothers and my sister as we approach this series on faith, I am inclined to believe that we all have faith, but on different plains. As I had shared ever so briefly last week, that there are some that have faith in the things that are tangible, such as having faith in a person that you do not know, to give you a job with pay, and having faith to plan for tomorrow, but when it comes to having faith in the things that seem impossible or the things that are unseen, we struggle with having that kind of faith. Now I must admit that we all struggle with as Pastor Hudson puts it “water walking faith,” but some struggle more than others.

Last month I was struggling with my faith. Until Deacon Wilson sent me, an e-mail called the Handy Little Chart. This chart gave me renewed faith when I thought there was very little. But, God through His word was saying we can. The chart had two columns, one said “YOU SAY” and the others said “GOD SAYS.” In the “You Say” column it said “It is impossible.” Then in the “God Says” column it said “All things are possible,” and gave the scripture (Luke 18:27). I hope you get the point. You see I had to refocus on what God was saying through His word. People were relaying to me what their eyes saw and had good intentions in trying to believe, but I’ve learned that we lose out on many blessings because of someone’s good intention. So I had to hear what the Lord was saying about our situation through His word and only consider what the eyes have seen.

In the Scriptures we’ll find faith passages tailored just for us. All we need to do is to learn to ask of the Lord. Matthew 7:7 says “ask and it shall be given” Matthew 21:22 says, “And all things, whatever you ask in prayer believing, you will receive” John 14:13,14 says, “And whatsoever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father might be glorified in the Son.” 14. “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” My personal favorite is 1 John 5:14; “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hearth us”;

So in this series coming from the book of Hebrews, I hope that we can get on the same page of biblical faith and to follow the Lord’s lead in things concerning not only our need as a church, but also your need as His people.

First of all . . .

1. THERE IS A NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHAT FAITH IS (v.1)

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

I like how the New Living Translation reads. It says, “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about thing we cannot see.” Faith is actually believing that what we hope for will come to pass. Dr. Oswald Sanders says and I quote; “Faith allows the believing soul to treat the future as if it is now, and the invisible as the seen.” I like to believe with a slight spin to what Dr. Sanders had said, that faith allows me to treat the future as it is now the past, that what I hoped for is what I’m using now, and for what I don’t see, I s what I’ve seen already. One of the perfect pictures exhibiting faith is found in a child’s belief in Christmas. Now grant it in the Christian community it is taught in Sunday School that Jesus is the reason for the season, but to a child Christmas means toys and gifts. Regardless of what myths we might try to extract from their minds, the bottom line is that they are expecting to wake up on Christmas morning to see the gifts that were left for them. They actually have the type of faith that is spoken about in the text, the substance of things hoped for, although they had not seen what is to come. But before you can have that type of faith, you first have to have confidence in something or someone that had given you the reason to believe. To a child, it is the tradition of receiving gifts on Christmas morning, but to a Believer, it is knowing what the Lord Jesus had done for you in the past through the promises found in His word. So, faith is knowing that we can trust God to deliver what He promised in His Holy Word. The secret is the more promises you know from His Word, the more faith you will have in the things not seen.