20/04/2020
WHAT IS FAITH?
If you are to replace fear with faith, then you must understand what faith is and how to
attain it. The Bible defines faith as “... the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). The Amplified Bible adds to this definition:
Now faith is the assurance, the confirmation, the title deed of the things we hope
for, being the proof of things we do not see, and the conviction of their reality.
Faith is perceiving as real what is not revealed to the senses. (Hebrews 11:1)
Faith gives assurance that things promised in the future are true and that unseen things
are real. The words “faith” and “believe” are used nearly 500 times in the New Testament and
faith is one of the basic Christian doctrines listed by the Apostle Paul in Hebrews 6:1-6.
Faith differs from hope because hope is simply a desire or expectancy concerning things
in the future. Faith is the belief in something you cannot see but have assurance you already
possess. Hope is in the mind while faith is in the heart:
But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as
a helmet the hope of salvation. (1 Thessalonians 5:8)
In this verse, faith is associated with the region of the heart as a breastplate. Hope is a
helmet associated with the head (the mind). Hope is a mental attitude of expectancy about the
future, while faith is a condition of the heart producing belief in God:
For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession
is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:10)
Believing with the heart always produces change in your life. The result is something
experienced in the present, not something hoped for in the future:
“Faith is not what we see. Faith always goes beyond what we see to what we hope for
and to what we believe we receive. That is why we thank God for the answer to our
prayer before the answer is seen. When it is seen we thank him by sight-but then we are
no longer thanking him by faith.”[2]
Faith is not the same as "mind over matter"......