What even IS faith?

English is a silly language. We have words that mean five different things. Many people grew up being told that the only way to please God is through having faith. If you grew up in the church you’ve heard pastors speak about how little faith Jesus’ disciples had because Jesus kept saying, “Oh you of little faith” as though He were shaming them. 🤦🏻‍♂️

So as I was reading Hebrews 11 this morning I thought I’d write today’s blog all about what authentic faith is and what it is not.

Let’s start with this: faith is not blind. When I first began reading the Bible in the amplified version I came across a verse where the amplified expanded this one little word in a profound way. It’s Colossians 1:4. It’s the easiest verse to just pass by without thinking about it because it’s Paul greeting the Colossians saying, “We’ve heard about your faith.” But in the amplified version it takes that word faith and defines it: The leaning of your entire human personality on Him in absolute trust and confidence in His wisdom, power and goodness. Now you may be saying, but Jeff sometimes we can’t SEE His wisdom, power and goodness and so faith IS blind! Aha! Well here’s the thing with that, this expansion on the word faith did not say that faith is the leaning of your entire human personality on your perception! It’s not the leaning of your entire human personality on your hopes! It’s not the leaning of your entire human personality on your theology! The leaning of one’s entire human personality on Him in absolute trust and confidence in His wisdom, power and goodness means that it’s faith when it’s actually aimed and anchored in the authentic nature of God. If our faith is anchored in the warring angels of Heaven, that’s getting closer but that’s still not His wisdom, His power or His goodness. So faith isn’t asking us to just blindly believe something and then live out our life based on that blind belief. Are there moments in life where the Lord invites us to step out in faith and risk? Absolutely! But our faith isn’t aimed at a belief, our faith is aimed at Him, trusting Him to come through for us as we risk. I went to and through ministry school without enough money to do it and the reason the financial miracles came through for me and didn’t come through for others is my faith was in His nature to come through for me. In response to His invitation, the risk was measured against His wisdom, power and goodness. If there is a formula, that’s it. Connection to His voice. So He’s not asking us to blindly believe things that aren’t true. That’s not faith, that’s naivety. He invites us though, to cast our faith as high as we can when we recognize that our current understanding of His wisdom isn’t the reality of His wisdom. His wisdom far surpasses my understanding of His wisdom, so I an actually cast my faith farther than I can see.

Continuing: faith is not the absence of doubt. I’ve heard several people now tell me that they can’t make the leap to giving their whole life to Jesus because they still feel like they have some doubt. Growing up in church I’ve heard the apostle Thomas shamed so many times because of the story about him towards the end of the book of John. Basically Thomas won’t believe that Jesus has resurrected. At this point in the story, Jesus has shown Himself physically to a bunch of people but Thomas just figured his good friends must be losing their mind with grief as he was. He makes a bold statement. He says He needs Jesus to let him put his fingers into the wounds on his living body and then he’ll believe. Then, in one of the most profound God encounters ever recorded, the living Jesus walks through the wall and comes and shows us what the true nature of God is really like and says ok to Thomas’ high demand. Then Jesus says something like blessed are those who believe without seeing. Here’s the thing! He’s saying that you’re blessed if you’re believing in something real before needing to confirm that it’s real. You’re not blessed if you’re just blindly believing in something that is not real. Thomas was invited to believe beyond the boundaries of his reality and he couldn’t quite make the jump but God still showed up for him in the most profuse way imaginable! So doubt isn’t this big shameful thing that God hates. He actually seems to understand why we have doubt. Years ago when I was stuck in Canada after my UK visa was denied and the Lord was telling me not to get a job but to use my time wisely, I had a bunch of doubts. I was concerned that I was living the narrative that leads people to becoming vagrants. He led me past my doubts with His voice. We dialogued about my doubts. The image I got at the time to explain my circumstance was of me, having climbed high into a large tree and the Lord was asking me to step on a very thin, spindly, definitely not weight supporting branch. “Step out on the branch that should break.” It’s a similar concept to when Moses was told to confront the Pharaoh and manifest a snake from his staff and then grab the snake by the tail. A snake grabbed by the tail will definitely strike. Moses openly doubts God when he’s told to grab the snake by the tail. I was open with my doubt when God was telling me not to get a job. But God leads us perfectly and dialogued all my doubts with me. So the seed of faith can live right alongside doubt.

Why did I say the seed of faith? Well, I’m glad you asked! It’s because there’s an interesting spiritual function connected with faith. For faith to really truly become faith, it requires we manifest it. It requires we birth it. It requires we act on it. I’m referring to James chapter 2 where James talks about faith and how faith without works is dead. He gives several examples of people acting on their faith (I’d say responding to the invitation to faith). Here’s a scripture that points out that simply believing in God isn’t faith. In James chapter 2 verse 19 he mentions that even the demons believe in God – and tremble. So there’s an element to faith that goes beyond just simply believing in something you haven’t seen yet. But then James hits one of the most profound concepts in the second half of the chapter. He talks about Abraham believing God and it being accounted to him as righteousness. And he was called a friend of God.

In Genesis 17, God appears to Abraham and offers to enter into a covenant with him. Abraham is an old man beyond child bearing years and has no children but God shows up and says if you enter into this covenant with me, your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Sidenote: I find that way of articulating it so intriguing because the human eye can perceive about 3000 stars in the night sky but God knew that He’d made trillions of galaxies. The context was so different between speaker and hearer that it’s flabbergasting. Anyway, Abraham, this ancient shepherd believed the voice of God and shifted the infrastructure of his life in accordance with what he’d heard and in so doing he hit the spiritual function of faith straight on the head and pleased God. His ongoing commitment to this way of living made him a friend of God.

Here’s a mind blowing concept. God created the universe in an intricately specific way so that we could be friends with Him. Abraham showed us the way to do it. Moses showed us the way to do it. Gideon showed us the way to do it. David showed us the way to do it. Jesus showed us the way to do it.

Hebrews 11 teaches a master class on what real faith is. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I suggest meditating on that sentence with Holy Spirit. What I mean by that is spend some time sitting somewhere quiet, maybe with a coffee just thinking about that. Faith is the substance of things hoped for… the evidence of things not seen. Faith is the highway to the things that are true that exist beyond the boundaries of our perception. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God… wow! He said worlds! But faith manifests understanding! Then the writer of Hebrews goes on listing people who had the seed of faith within and then acted on it and manifested faith into the earth. Abel offered God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him (wild story that is told in like one verse in Genesis with no real explanation). Then we hit verse 6. But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. 💥

Your behavior is the line between philosophy and belief. I can know about many different ideas but to the degree that I actually behave in accordance with them is the degree that I truly believe them. All of these people the writer of Hebrews talked about have that in common. They acted on the invitation to believe. They acted on the belief that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Their behavior revealed their beliefs just as our behavior reveals our beliefs.

Picture yourself driving a car. You’ve got your destination in mind and you’ve put it into your GPS. Your GPS has the entire route outlined. When you see a left turn coming up you’ve got the seed of faith within you. When you turn left you’ve stepped out and manifested faith in your GPS to be taking you to where it says it is. Human life is dramatically more complex than the routes on a map. Most humans would set the GPS of their life to take them to whichever path requires the least of them, whichever path costs them the least amount of themself. Most people think that would mean having more money than they have currently. I don’t say a lot because many people with a lot don’t think they have enough. So it takes faith to believe that God is truly leading us perfectly when He tells us to not get a job and use our time wisely.

It takes faith to lean the entire personality on Him and allow our heart to grasp onto more than confidence but absolute trust in Him. But that ancient, eternal invitation remains like time standing still, birds frozen in the air. The invitation to actually align to absolute trust in His wisdom – we can anchor in the idea that He knows what He’s doing and His worst plan is better than our best plan. It’s the invitation to truly align to absolute trust in His power – we can anchor in the idea that He is the one who is able to carry out His purpose and do superabundantly, far over and above all that we dare ask or think, infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes or dreams. That’s Ephesians 3:20. And it’s the invitation to authentically align to absolute trust in His goodness – we can anchor in the idea that because His goodness is infinite, our current level of revelation about His goodness is catastrophically small. When we project the future, we project the future according to our current understanding of who He is and what He’s like. But His goodness infinitely transcends our most daring hopes so there’s no way to project how good He’s going to be in our future. In fact, the only thing we really can be assured of is that our understanding of His goodness will grow and as it does we’ll be more and more able to look into the future with bright shining hope! If we could see the true dimensions of His goodness we would explode from how hopeful the future truly is! The future is hopeful because of who He is.

God doesn’t lead us like a GPS because He hates spoilers. The destination is deeper connection to Him and He knows that the way to gain ground in our hearts is not by giving us everything we want but by walking with us through this life he created us for.

My encouragement to you today is to step out on that spindly little branch He’s asking you to step out on. Step out on the branch that should break. Turn your seeds of faith into faith and become friends of God!