What is Faith?

Faith is our trustful response to God’s self-revelation via his words and his actions.  God initiates this relationship with us and lets us make the choice to accept it.  He provides evidence of his trustworthiness by speaking and acting into the world.  This trust in God is both objective and subjective.  God is objectively outside human beings and showing us the truth of His nature, which we can trust in.  We subjectively chose to believe or not.

It is by faith that we understand God.  If we don’t have the faith to start believing in him, we surely won’t get to know him either.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1 NKJV).  We cannot see him or how he created the world.  By faith we understand that worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible (Hebrews 11:3).  If we read Genesis 1, it states that God ‘said’ and then it happened.  His very words created the world out of nothing.

That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.  For the scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”  For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him.  For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  Romans 10:9-13.

Belief is the verb form of faith in our English translations.  We are to act on the testimony the world gives us through what we see and hear.  The resurrection of Jesus after he was crucified was proven by eye witnesses who saw him after.  God relied upon people to believe it was Jesus resurrected and in turn for them to tell the whole world of how God worked salvation for us through Jesus.  He made sure there was proof for people’s faith to act upon.

Once we accept Christ and become a Christian, God will see how the trials of life build or deplete our faith.  We are expected to have a relationship with him where he reveals himself more and more.  In doing so our faith is to grow.  Faith was one of the things Jesus admonished the most.  He kept asking why they had so little faith.  He did this with Peter when he started sinking into the water after a few steps.  He told them all they had little faith when they woke him from a sound sleep due to a storm they feared.

But faith is also a gift.  For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith, (Romans 12:3).  God gives each of us a measure of faith to work with and build upon as we live life according to his plan.

God wants us to have faith in him and accept him fully in body, mind and soul.  Either you chose to believe with all you are or you don’t.

Have you stepped out to accept Christ as your savior yet?  If not, the bible says we have no excuse not to know him and trust him.  If you are a Christian, don’t give up on Him even when your faith feels as small as a mustard seed.  Look what his disciples were capable of doing even when Jesus kept admonishing them about little faith.  They accepted and grew into men who changed the world for Christ.