FAITH IS ________________________________________?

     So many times we search for answers when we should be searching for the right question. I say that because it is the question that sets the direction for our search that defines our lives. With that reality in mind I want to ask you a really important question. What is faith? Now the search for the answer to that question may well take you a lifetime. However, the result of discovering the answer will be a life lived beyond the limits in which this world has chosen to believe. John Mason once said “Faith is putting all your eggs in God’s basket, then counting your blessings before they hatch”. I also share his belief that the primary cause of unhappiness in the world today is a lack of faith.
     Hebrews 11:1 reads “That faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things yet seen”. Or to put it more simply it is believing in that which we have not seen. But the problem with that simple understanding is that faith is so much more than a belief. It is a verb and an action word. It is not the belief but the action we take because of our belief. Corrie Ten Boom would say “Faith is like a radar that sees through the fog, the reality of things at a distance that the human eye can not see”. Faith really is all about seeing the invisible and believing in the incredible so that the impossible can become reality. Faith is the switch that turns loose God’s power to accomplish the impossible in and through the ordinary. Without faith Jesus could not do any miracles among the people in His home town. (Mark 6:5) Their lack of faith caused them to miss out on a blessing that was meant to be for them. Their lives were lived out in the ordinary though they were in the very presence and power to experience the extraordinary life God had planned for them.
     Now there are times in life when faith is actually believing that what we actually see is not true. Have you ever thought to yourself that there was no way this or that could happen only to see it come to be? Now faith will never abandon us but we certainly can abandon it. Saint Augustine once said that “faith is believing in what we can not see. The reward for that faith is seeing that which we believed in”. Faith helps us to build on what we know is here so we can reach what we know is there. “Without faith it is impossible for us to please God” so just how important is it that we know exactly what faith is? (Heb.11:6) So let me ask you once again what is faith exactly? Discover the answer to that question and apply it directly to your life on a daily basis and people will speak of your life lived beyond the boundaries of this world until Jesus returns to take us home.