Tonight I want to talk about this thing called faith! I mean, what the heck is it? We hear it talked about all the time. Married couples are supposed to remain faithful. Church tells us to be men and women of faith. Even the Boston Red Sox motto for the year is, “Keep the Faith.” But do we really understand what faith is?!
God has really challenged me with this thing called faith this summer. I always thought I understood exactly what it meant to have faith in God. I mean, I grew up in the church and heard about faith all the time. I have heard people pronounce that they have “found the faith and believed in God.” I had read about faith in the Bible and had conversations with friends or family. As far as I knew, everyone who was a Christian had faith because they believed in God and the church was full of people of faith and always would be.
The text that I want to look at tonight is Hebrews 11, verses 1 and 6. These two verses really challenged my definition of what faith is and I hope by the end of the night your prior ideas to what faith is will be challenged as well.
HEB 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. HEB 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
I think a lot of time our culture defines faith by using the word trust. How many of you guys have ever participated in or seen a trust fall? You climb up onto a stage, in front of a group of your friends. They stand below you and get into position as you prepare to fall into their arms. The whole point of the activity is to build trust in your group. But is that the same thing as faith?
I would argue no. Trust is a part of having faith but it goes much deeper. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. The first halve of this verse define trust. We are sure of what we hope for. When we are doing trust falls we hope that we are going to be caught and not dropped on our head. The second halve of this verse is where faith becomes much deeper than trust.
DJ, can I have you come up here for me…Blind Faith Fall
That is where trust and faith are different. Faith is often illogical. You don’t know what is going to happen or what exactly is going to catch you but you have faith that you will be caught. DJ trusted [or not] in my voice telling him to fall backwards but he wasn’t certain if there was anyone there to catch him. That is how our relationship with God can be very often. We have God’s Word telling us stuff, our pastor’s tell us stuff, our Sunday School teacher’s tell us stuff but yet we can’t really see God. We have to believe and be certain of what we do not see.
This is essentially the spot where I found myself with faith at the beginning of the summer. Faith is a belief in God, knowing that He is there even though I can’t really see him. Faith is listening to and looking for the signs that give us hope that God is real and looking out for us. As we look at verse 6 though, faith is so much more than just belief in what we can not see.
Focusing in on the second half of verse 6 it says, “anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists (there is where our definition of faith is at the moment) and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” This verse says that there is more to faith than just belief. At first it is easy to misread this part of the verse. I’m sure many people will read this verse and go, “Cool, I have to believe and get rewards, then I have faith. I can do that!” But, that’s not what this passage says though. If we read this last part backwards it helps communicate a little clearer what the passage is saying. “Anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that those who earnestly seek him, he rewards.” The writer is saying, in order to have faith we must believe and ACT UPON IT! We need to be searching God out and we need to be investing in a relationship with him.
When DJ did [was doing] his faith fall, when exactly did he exhibit faith? DJ didn’t [wouldn’t have] exhibit faith until he was falling. As he was standing their on the stage he may or may not of had a belief that he would be caught but he didn’t have faith yet. What God has shown me is that faith is a verb, an action that must be coupled with our belief; otherwise we just have a belief and we lack faith.
This is the very spot that the majority of Christians find themselves today. We have a lot of beliefs about God or Jesus but we don’t exhibit faith because we don’t act on our beliefs. We say that we believe that God is always with us and will never forsake us but yet we have faith that he is with us so that we can tell a friend about Jesus. We say that we believe that Jesus answers prayer but yet we don’t have faith because we don’t bring much to Him in prayer. We say that we believe that Jesus can heal people but yet we don’t have faith because we don’t want to feel or look dumb because we boldly pray for the healing of someone. Faith is an action that must accompany our belief!
I want to end by looking at the first half of verse 6. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Let that sink in for a minute… God doesn’t want people who just say that they believe in God but he wants people who are going to dive into a relationship with Him and back up their beliefs. If we really lived out the things that we say that we believe, if we lived out the things that the Bible teaches us our world would not look the same at all. God wants people who are real with Him, people who act because of their beliefs.
I met with my mentor today and was talking about faith with him. He said to me, “Most people are bored with their relationship with God in America today and the reason why people are bored is because they don’t have faith.” What he meant was that people aren’t growing. They are comfortable and they want God to do all the work. There is no risk involved in their life. We need to wake up every morning and challenge ourselves to grow in faith. That’s what it means to “earnestly seek God.” We need to constantly be growing in our faith.
When Jesus asked the disciples to come and follow Him they were instantly on a roller coaster for the rest of their life of up and downs, fear and excitement. The more time the disciples spent with Jesus the more questions they had, the more they were challenged, and the more their lives were changed. It all came down to a choice they made to follow this guy named Jesus.
God is calling up men and women of faith today! He is calling the very people sitting in this room! God wants us to believe in Him but he wants us to back up our words of love by our actions. We need to be earnestly seeking after God, pursuing God in a relationship, and then challenging ourselves with the things that we believe.
I am going to hand out note cards now to everyone. What I want you to do with these cards is I want you to challenge yourself with your faith. Write down a goal so that you can grow closer in your relationship with God. I want you to find a spot alone for a few minutes and I want you to earnestly seek God! Pray and ask God how you can grow, what you need to change, what risk of faith you can take. It’s going to be different for all of us. For some people here it may be a risk just to let a friend know that we go to church. For other it will be a risk to invite a friend to church. For another maybe the risk is to tell a friend about Jesus yourself. But God wants to challenges you. He doesn’t want you to pick something you already do. He wants you to look at what you believe and take a risk to have faith.
