Faith. Hope. And love. These three...
confuse the stew out of us!
Little words with huge meanings.
We can try and try and never plumb the depths of these three simple words, words we toss around most every day as though they were as concrete as butter, cat or pencil. They're not, though. They're full of abstract concepts, emotion, acts of the will, and deep thought. And they're best defined by the source of all three: God alone.
Let's talk just a little about faith today.
Where does it come from? Well the Bible says that even our faith is originated with God. Ephesians 2:8 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." So if we manage to have even a mustard seed sized faith, it is because God granted us that bit of faith. And by the same token, if our faith is to grow, it will only grow by God's working in our lives. In fact, faith comes by hearing the Word of God. The more we expose ourselves to the living, breathing Word of God, the more He can increase our faith.
What does our faith do? Does it move mountains, heal bodies, change circumstances, save us from hell?
Nope.
Only God does those things. Our faith does not change or fix or move or get us anything.
But it does do one very important thing.
It pleases God.
Faith is simply our expression of full and total trust in God. It says to God, "I can't do this. No one else can either. But You can. I will not go to any other source, but I will trust you completely in this matter."
And when we take hands off, let go, and turn our eyes to God with full expectation that He can and will take the thing and run with it in a way that is for our best interest, it pleases Him to no end.
Then, He is freed up to move the mountain (if He so chooses), to heal (if He so chooses), to fix (if He so chooses), or to give (if He so chooses).
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
(Hebrews 11:1)
When we act "by faith" we demonstrate that trust to God and He moves. We step out and He causes our feet to land on solid ground. We let go and He grabs hold. We get up the next day and He sets things into motion. We take our hands off and He lays His on. We quit trying to fix things and He either fixes it or fixes us. We walk "by faith" and He does the work.
It is not our faith, our prayers, our recitation of Scripture, or anything else we do that causes things to turn out, work out, or get out.
It's not our faith. It's Him. It's all Him.