Easter - 2018

Monday, July 6, 2009

My faith shall become sight

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
Faith is defined as the unshakable confidence in the reality of the yet unseen world and the certainty of God's yet unfulfilled promises. Faith is belief in what you cannot see - in this instance, the existence of God - and that he will keep his word and reward those who trust in him. Alexander Whyte explains these two statements this way:

"Faith in its most elementary sense, faith in its first and foundation sense, simply means the reliance place by one man on the truthfulness and power of another. You make a statement of fact to me or give me a promise and offer an assurance and faith is that state of mind in me to you, that state of mind in me which accepts your statement and relies on your promise." [Sermons of 1881-82, 68]

Now, of course, that it a great deal easier to say than it is to do. Sometimes people speak as if faith were the easiest thing in all the world. They make it seem as if God's kindness is shown in this: that instead of requiring us to keep his commandments for salvation, he lowered the bar and requires us now only to believe in him. But, of course, it is exactly the reverse. Faith, true faith, is the most difficult thing in the world, it runs directly counter to the entire tendency of our inner being. No one ever believes by himself or herself. No one can believe. Faith is and must be the gift of God otherwise no one would ever believe and be saved.

Think of what must be believed in order to become a Christian. That you are God's creature, that you have rebelled, that he is holy and you are guilty as a sinner before him, that he sent Jesus Christ into the world to atone for sin, that by believing in Jesus his righteousness and the virtue of his death are imputed to you so that your guilt is swept away and you are accounted righteous in God's sight, that, if you believe in Jesus, you have been made a new creature in Christ, have been given a summons to live a new life and the power to live it, that when you die and your body is laid in the ground, your soul will be immediately and gloriously in the presence of God in heaven, and Jesus Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead and to vindicate those who have trusted in him, and that endless bliss and perfect satisfaction of human life, body and soul, awaits, at the resurrection, those who have trusted Jesus Christ.

You can't see any of this. You can't prove it in a laboratory. No one ever comes back from the other world to tell us of how things are there. The evidence of our eyes is against all of this. We can't see sins forgiven, we have to believe it. We can't see the soul in heaven. We have to believe it. We have to believe it all on the strength of God's promise. Christ said he would return, but it has been 2000 years! We must believe that he will keep his promise.

Our Faith remains true for the Christian himself or herself through the course of the Christian life. I believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. I also have faith in the Word and that the Word was made flesh...I ALSO know that He is working in my life and the lives of Christ-followers all around me, because I have seen His work and can testify to the truth that He lives.

Praying for you and our Faith today - Don

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