Finding Faith

Its helps to turn off the TV when posting so that one can focus :)

My goodness where to start..

Well while I've been doing my study every Wednesday night I have been thoroughly enjoying it, and finding at times that its too much to process to be doing every week.
Anyway, the previous topic we covered was called 'life of faith' which I thought would be great and... it was.

Faith is certainly not the easiest topic to write on so I ask for your graces when reading.

The Dictionary defines faith as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something"
The Bible defines faith as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen"

so from that starting point lets build (blog)

whilst hearing the lectures about faith the issue came up about the dictionary's definition of 'complete trust or confidence' and I had to start asking myself "do I have COMPLETE trust and / or confidence in my God?" and its at that point that I realised that when I break down my life into everything I do, I have very little trust in God or confidence that he will provide for me when the time is right. it seems the very fact that I have an income shows that I do not trust in him. That is keeping in mind that very few will have the faith required or be called to voluntarily live in poverty. the fact that more than half my prayer life is dedicated to things I want shows that I don't trust God to supply these things when he wills it. I believe for all of us who walk with the Lord need to honestly assess our lives on a day to day basis of how much we trust God, and how much confidence we have in him. As a result of this I have had strong conviction about my reading habits, my prayer habits and in general my attitude towards many many things.

Now for the Bibles definition, and as you can imagine this will be fairly longer.
'The assurance of things hoped for', now assurance is something we gain when we are sure of something, when we are confident that 'x' situation will result in 'y' outcome type of thing. So how does this relate to God or our walk with him? In the ideal situation this means that we are assured of the things we hope for, whether that be going to heaven, God saving our close friend or simply a personal revelation from him, these are things that, rightly, we expect to some degree in our walk of faith. Therefore these are the things we are hoping for, so this means for us that faith is our assurance, that we have no doubt because we are sure of what is going to happen. so then comes the situation when we don't get what we hoped for, maybe we don't get that pay rise we have been praying about to help cope with increasing mortgage payments, or food prices. maybe the friend we prayed healing for dies of cancer. What then? this is where we need to understand that the dictionary's definition is actually very biblical in itself. in these situations (and as you would agree they are fairly common) we need to have complete confidence in Gods plan for us, and for those affected by such a situation. After all he is God, he knows all and created all. to have doubt is perfectly human and there are such times at which we need to yell at God, where we need to ask God "why?" where we need to express ourselves to him because those times are when we are laying things at his feet and in our hearts we are saying 'God I can't understand this, I can't believe this. Please help me understand, help my disbelief.' The bible talks of 'faith like a mustard seed' now if you understand how small a mustard you will understand the influence of this passage as its basically implying 'look here the minimum, and its very very low' so then we need to be able to work with that minimum we need to be able to grow on it, strengthen it. There’s no use praying for muscles (faith) if you're not going to work out the little muscles (faith) you already have. its only when we put stress on our muscles and USE them that they grow.

'Conviction of things unseen' when somebody receives a conviction, whether it be from God or from a police officer we know that they are guilty of something and that they know now firmly that that certain area needs to be addressed. So then to have a conviction of things unseen is like what we see in the minority report where people are convicted of crimes they are yet to commit. The argument is 'but I never did it' and the proposal is 'Yes but we know you intend to.' so then from this we can take that faith is guilt of things (sins) we are yet to do. the basis for this statement is that we know we are sinful by nature, we know with complete confidence that no matter how good we try to be we will always fall and slip up.

Faith really is not by any means a human attribute which is why it is commonly referred to as the 'currency of heaven' and which is probably why it is the most common area in which Christians struggle, myself and probably anyone reading included. it is the area of which Satan wants to attack the most as he knows that without we are nothing, and without it God cannot connect with us, and us with him.

So then the other thing we need to be asking ourselves is how healthy is our faith?
we need to look at our lives with honesty and integrity asking God to reveal to us any areas at all that we may be slipping.

The result of all this thought in my life the last few weeks has been difficult for me to undergo and yet humbling to a degree where I need to be integris in all that I do and my approach (or attitude) to the things that engulf my life.