Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 170
TRANSCRIPT
Without faith it is impossible to please God. We all know this verse out of Hebrews 11, but what is faith? Is faith a feeling that motivates us to live a certain way? Or does faith come from hearing and hearing through the Word of God? Or is faith a gift given to us by God? What if the answer to each of these questions is YES! In this week’s podcast I want to explore the topic of faith as an attempt to help each of us become more confident in the faith that we have.
I’m Lee Whitman from Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom Podcast. There are so many verses on faith, so I am going to pick Hebrews 11:6 as our verse for the day. It says, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.” The entire chapter of Hebrews 11 is called the faith chapter, because it describes the faith of the heroes found in the bible. People like Cain, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham and many others.
I believe there are many different ways we express our faith today. I was challenged the other day to do this podcast on faith because sometimes our faith is so powerful that it is deeply felt within. Other times the decisions we make are based on faith, knowing that what the bible says is absolutely true, even when we don’t have that Holy Spirit feeling. So, if I had to give a simple definition of what faith is, I would say that faith is confidence. If a person says they have faith in a chair to hold their weight, they are saying they have confidence in that chair. When we say we have faith in God, we are really saying that we have confidence in God.
In this podcast I am focusing on two ways that our faith in God, using my word, our confidence in God. Sometimes our confidence in God is a gift given to us by God Himself, and sometimes our confidence comes from knowing the truth of what God says in His Word.
I want to focus on two specific ways that faith is expressed in the bible. The first is found in Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not your own doing, it is a gift of God.” This verse is very clear that faith is a gift of God. The very act of salvation is a gift from God and He bestows the faith into us to accept His Son as Savior. I have seen over the years that one of the mistakes Christians make when trying to evangelize the lost is that we believe that if we can give a good clear argument for the Gospel, in other words appeal to the intellect, then a person will accept our argument and receive Jesus. Getting saved is not a matter of the intellect. It is a matter of the heart. And according to this verse, God is the one who gives a person the grace and faith to be able to receive Christ. John 6:44 says “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him;” So even the faith for salvation is a gift of God to draw us to Christ. God is the giver of the faith needed to receive Christ.
Then in the passage in Romans Paul talks about the church being like a human body, with the different parts of the body having different functions. In verses 3-8 of Romans 12 Paul says this, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. 4 For just as we have many parts in one body and all the body’s parts do not have the same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually parts of one another. 6 However, since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to use them properly: if prophecy, in proportion to one’s faith;7 if service, in the act of serving; or the one who teaches, in the act of teaching; 8 or the one who exhorts, in the work of exhortation; the one who gives, with generosity; the one who is in leadership, with diligence; the one who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” These gifts are given by God. It says God has allotted to each a measure of faith. Does that measure of faith come from us, or is it given to us by God? It is pretty clear from these verses the faith to operate in these gifts is given to us by God. Paul says that we have differing gifts according to the grace that is given us. Grace and faith in this context are both given to us by God. When we exercise the gift of prophecy for example, we are not doing that out of our ability. That gift was given to us by God, and we get to exercise it in the Body of Christ by the faith that is given to us. You may have had this happen to you but you are in a church service, and someone gives a word of prophesy. Immediately you sense that something is off in your spirit. Your spirit does not resonate with the prophecy. I believe when that happens there is a high probability that the word was given from that person’s flesh and not from the spirit. People at times will give a word that they want the people to hear, but it is their thought and not through the faith given them from God. For example, one of my spiritual gifts is that I am an encourager. I like encouraging people. So, I have learned to say to people when I am not sure if what I am about to say is a word of encouragement out of my natural mind or a prophetic word, I am not sure if this is from me or from the Holy Spirit.
So, I think one kind of faith is given to us by God. It wells up within us so that we know that we know, that we know the truth about God. No one had to teach us that truth. It was a gift from God. Since God is the giver of this faith, we can also ask him to increase our faith. In Luke 17:5, the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. It says, “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” It is encouraged by God to ask Him for more faith to match the situations we encounter. When facing difficulty, Jesus would often go away and get alone with His father to pray. What was He talking to God about? I am not sure, but I do know that Jesus was getting strengthened to face the difficult situation ahead. Even though Jesus was God in the flesh, He still spent time with His father before He did anything.
I also believe there is another kind of faith that is something that we exercise based on what we know about God. Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of God.” There is a kind of faith that grows within us as we take in the Word of God. This kind of faith is not always based on that inner welling up of the Holy Spirit, but it rather is based on knowing that what the bible says is the absolute objective truth, and we will live our life according to that truth. 2 Corinthians 5:7 says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” Many times, we make decisions based on the truth in God’s word, not on our feelings or experience. For me tithing fits into this category. The bible teaches that we are to give unto the Lord the first portion of our income. I don’t give because I always have this Holy Spirit motivation to give, I do it because I know this is a truth found in God’s Word. My faith about giving has developed by hearing what the Word of God says. And then my faith gets combined with my works. James 2:17 says “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” This kind of faith is knowing what God’s word says is true, so we put that truth into actions.
A foundation for the kind of faith that does what the bible says even when you don’t have feelings to empower those actions is found in Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Notice this kind of faith is based on what you know more than on what you feel. This also points to the importance of being taught the Word of God. The more we receive and digest God’s Word, the more our assurance of things hoped for grows. The word here for hope does not mean what it does in English. The word hope in English means something that is wanted or desired. We might say I hope it does not rain on Saturday. In other words, we have a desire or a want that it does not rain on Saturday. The biblical word for hope means a confident expectation of good. Where does that confident expectation come from? It comes from knowing the character of God. When we know the character of God, we have a confident expectation of the good that He wants to do in our lives.
1 Corinthians 16:13 says “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” This can point to both kinds of faith. Stand firm in the faith that God gives that is felt and experienced through the Holy Spirit. The kind of faith that wells up and gives you what you need to stand firm. It also points to standing firm in the truth of what you have been taught through the Word. To act according to what you know to be the truth whether you feel it or not. You know you are to forgive because God has told us to forgive anyone who has offended us. Not because you have this overwhelming desire to forgive, but because you know according to what you have been taught that it is something we can do. According to the faith that came by hearing.
There tends to be two extremes in the body of Christ when it comes to living by faith. There are those who base their life totally on the objective truth found in the bible. I was raised in one of these churches. We knew the Word of God, and we were faithful to do all that was written in the Word without any verification from the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Feelings were never part of the equation. It was all about doing what the Word said. Much of their relationship with God is about doing what they know to do without any feeling attached. I have heard these called Word Churches. These would be the people who live by the faith that is based on knowing the truth of God.
Then there are churches that rely on the witness of the Holy Spirit over and above the written Word. These are the group of believers who are very in touch with the movements of the Holy Spirit. They practice a form of Christianity that is characterized by feeling and responding to the Holy Spirits movement in their lives. I have heard these called Spirit Churches. These would be people that many times have to experience the movement of the Spirit in order to walk in faith.
I believe that we need both the Word and the Spirit in order to accurately walk in faith. The Word without the Spirit causes people to live by self-effort and discipline. The Spirit without the Word, can at times cause people to be unstable. They confuse their personal feelings with what is the Holy Spirit. I believe the bible shows that we need both. We need the Word of God empowered by the Spirit of God. I hope we are doing what Hebrews 12:2 says, “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith.” When we walk in lockstep with Jesus, we will experience life, and that life more abundantly.
PRAYER
Father God, help us experience more of the faith that you give. As the Apostles prayed, Lord increase our faith.