A Closer Look At Faith Series

“A Closer Look: Faith”

Introduction:

We live in a world in which it is hard to have faith. People expect everything to make sense logically and faith very rarely fits into people’s equations. We as the church are supposed to be based and founded on faith. Faith is what keeps us going and operating, but sometimes the church looses its faith and trust in God. It is easy to feel this way when times get tough and things are not going the way we planned. It is easy to get that way today, but we must always maintain a faith that God will work all things for the good of those who love Him. If we would become people that had total and complete faith in God we would grow and multiply and individually we would mature into a strong body of believers.

We need to be a Church of faith, which completely and totally trusts in God for everything. Sometimes it is hard to have faith when it does not make sense, when all logic says something cannot be done, with God it can.

Remember it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and as James says faith without works is dead. We must not only verbally confirm that faith, but we must show our faith in how we live and act in this world. If we would only be a Church with faith God could do immeasurably more that we could ever imagine.

Perhaps today you have not trusted in God. Perhaps your faith is not being shown in how you live. Today we are given a new start and a chance to grow in our faith.

Do you remember Noah? He was a great man of faith God told Noah to build a boat because he was going to flood the Earth. Imagine the faith it took Noah to build that Ark! He had never seen rain before, he had faith in God. Do you remember the faith of Abraham? God told Abraham to offer his son, his only son as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. Abraham though, but God I thought my descendants would be numerous. Abraham had faith that God would raise Him from the dead, and took His son to sacrifice and God intervened. Faith is what saves us and our response from our faith. Just imagine what we could do with real faith. We would be a powerful church if we really believed God would do great things with us. Sometimes we say it but don’t believe it, let us move from not trusting to having faith in God.

I love to read stories of faith because in them you see two things. First, you see the trust of godly people in their God, which was unhindered and completely pure. Secondly, you see the faithfulness of a loving God who always meets our needs according to Hid will. Sometimes God does not respond to us how we would like, but His will is perfect and we must trust that He has our best interest in mind. As we hear of stories of Abraham, Noah, and David, how do we compare? They were not superheroes, they were not perfect in their lifestyles, and they just had faith in God. Do we have that same faith in our God, that he will respond to those who have faith and that our faith is powerful.

There was a little boy who was caught in a fire at home. He could not get out of the burning house. He climbed up out onto the roof of the burning home, and began to cry for his father’s help. The father looked up at his son from the ground, and told him to jump. “I can’t see you though daddy, how will you catch me?” said the son. The father said, “I can see you”. Without further hesitation the boy jumped into his father’s arms.

Sometimes we need to have that same type of pure faith that a child has in their parents in our Heavenly father.

Without faith it is impossible to please God, but with it we can move mountains!

Text: 11:1-6

I. Faith in God’s existence

Some things recorded in scripture are hard to understand and even more difficult to accept. This world tries to fill our minds with scientific evidence proving that God does not exist and that we were not created by any intelligent being. Sometimes we have more faith in the scientists who give us information than we do the Word of God. Sometimes we blindly accept their theories as fact, even if they are contrary to scripture. Christians have tried and tired to reconcile the scientific theory of evolution and the Biblical view of creation, but they cannot be harmonized. Either you believe in a creator God the way the Bible teaches or you don’t. What I am suggesting today is that we have faith. I suggest we trust wholly in the God who has never been proven wrong. The faith that we have is not a blind faith, and it is not a leap of faith. The faith that we have is based on Truth and logic. We must believe that God exists and believe it by faith even if some aspects of it do not make sense and are hard to understand. It is hard to answer questions like, if God created the world, who created God? Saying, God always was, is not enough for some, but we simply must believe that God does not have to meet our expectations of logic and sense. Faith is heavily incorporated into our relationship with God. We can believe that God exists.