3. Am I willing to repent? Am I willing to turn from the pattern of unbelie t has produced this wilderness heart of mine? We must ask God to grow a heart of faith, because we cannot do it on our own. Remember that faith is a gift (see Ephesians 2:8); we can’t cultivate this ourselves. But we can go to God humbly as the disciples did and say, “Lord, increase our faith.” Are you ready to pray that prayer right now?
Look Up
Lord, thank You today that You are a good and a faithful God. Oh, God, increase my faith! Give me this day and this week a greater capacity to trust You, to rest in Your promises. Lord, help me to see You related to the very circumstances I face. Might I see how all that comes our way and how we handle it is directly related to our willingness to rest in Your promises and walk closely with You. Grant that kind of victory to me. May this day be different because of what I’ve prayed and acknowledged before You in this moment. And I promise to give You thanks and praise and glory for Your care and compassion for my life. In Jesus’ name I ask these things. Amen.
NOTES
1. As quoted in Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7,700 Illustrations (Rockville, Md.: Assurance, 1979), 404.
2. Charles Swindoll, Strengthening Your Grip (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1990), 38.
CHAPTER 8:
WITH AN ATTITUDE OF FAITH
HEBREWS 11
SAY IT IN A SENTENCE:
Only when faith replaces doubt in the life of a believer can the joy of knowing God become a reality.
Wow, you’re still reading, excellent! You must be really serious about changing your attitude. Know that an incredible blessing awaits if you persevere. I have been working on my attitudes, too. And I’ve found an increased sense of joy and the Lord’s presence as I put off the attitudes that make life like a wilderness and put on the attitudes that bring peace and satisfaction regardless of my momentary circumstance.
Yes, great blessings await as we begin this important chapter. I encourage you to pray even as you read: “Lord, increase my faith!”
Remember that faith is an attitude—it’s Promised Land attitude number four—and that each attitude is a pattern of thinking formed over a long period of time. We may decide to change during a crisis, but we actually change moment-by-moment in the process of living. Every decision we make contributes in some way to the pattern of thinking that becomes your attitude. That includes the attitude of faith.
WHAT IS FAITH?
Now let’s learn how to develop this great Promised Land attitude—faith. We begin by ridding ourselves of the faulty notions of faith:
-- Faith is not an ostrich, head-in-the-sand and denying the obvious or the inevitable. It’s not pretending that something is real when deep down you really don’t believe it. That’s fear, not faith.
-- Faith is not anti-intellectual, either. Faith is not a warm feeling that requires you to check you intellect at the door. That’s feeling, not faith.
-- Faith is not a stained-glass and dreamy sort of Little-House-on-the-Prairie escapism. I cannot stay in church again, hiding from reality, ignoring the world around me. That’s fluff, not faith.
-- Faith is not some motivational seminar, with some high-powered guru calling for breathing exercises or self-relaxation and self-confidence, telling you to picture a better future. That’s fad, not faith.
-- It’s not some stupid positive mental attitude, a you-have-to-keep-believing thing. It’s not ignoring the pain and embracing optimism regardless of the evidence in front of you. That’s foolishness, not faith.
Now hear this:
Faith is rooted in a God who is real!
Faith finds itself founded on a person—the creator God of the universe. The one who created the universe is with you this moment! He loves you. Faith is active confidence in the God who has revealed Himself, not some presumptuous uncertainty about a someone, somewhere out in space. God has proven Himself real again and again, and if you’ve not experienced His reality, you can.
Everyone has faith—the capacity to trust. We don’t stay alive long without it. But what we base our faith on is ultimately what makes the difference. The faith I’m talking about here is the faith that turns away from placing our trust in circumstances or our own abilities, which always fail us. We’re saying, “My life goes much better when I place my deepest faith and confidence in a sovereign God.” That’s the faith that Jesus invites us to place in Him. That’s the faith that is so powerfully illustrated by Hebrews 11.
THE PRESCRIPTION OF FAITH
What does faith mean, exactly? Hebrews 11:1 gives us an excellent definition of faith. I like the New King James Version: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” I love those two words— substance and evidence. They comprise the prescription of faith. Let’s look at them.
First of all, faith is substance. Most people don’t look at it that way. They look at faith as very ethereal. It’s not; faith has substance. We practice such faith often in the physical world. Pick up the phone and call a department store to place an order, and they’ll ask for your credit card number. Then they’ll probably mail you a receipt. You don’t have the product; you only have a receipt. But with it in hand, you wait confidently for the product you ordered to come. That receipt in hand— that’s the substance that you hold on to while you wait for the thing that you’ve ordered.
Same thing with a hotel reservation: They give you a confirmation number, and with that number, you have faith a room is reserved and waiting for you. Or you pay a bill over the Internet. The first time I did that, it was so scary. What’s going to happen? The money came out of my account. They gave me this long number with seventy-four digits and said, “This is your order number.” As I waited to see if the money I sent made it, I hung on to that number. The number is the substance that I hang on to while I wait to see if the transaction is completed.
Now the spiritual world operates under similar principles. I take a need before God in prayer. My faith, my active confidence in God, is the thing that I hold on to while I wait to see how the Lord is going to answer what I’ve brought before Him. If I have a painful circumstance in my life and I’m asking God to change that or to change me, my faith is the substance that I hold while I wait upon God to do the things that I’ve asked Him to do. So faith is substance.
Faith is also evidence. The reason that I know the product that I ordered is going to come to my front door is because I’ve done it before. So I don’t feel like a fool every time I walk to my front door and check to see if they have delivered the product yet. I don’t feel stupid, or presumptuous, or even silly, because I’ve done this before and I know how it works. So my past experiences are the evidence that I hold on to while I wait for the doorbell to ring.
Now, in the same sense, faith is the evidence that God is faithful. Did you know that we’re not the first people to trust God? Psalm 90:1 says, “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.” People have been trusting God for thousands of years. This is not a foolish thing to do. The fyou wfulness of God—not just in generations past, but in my own life—provides me with evidence.
I’m sure you can think of specific times and places where God has come through for you, showing Himself faithful. He has met your needs in the past. That’s the evidence of things not yet seen for the future. We know how He works—we’ve seen it before—so we don’t feel foolish waiting upon God to meet our needs again. Faith is active confidence in God. Faith is substance and evidence.
STATEMENT OF FAITH
Faith is so integral to the Christian life that over the years we’ve boiled it down to a very practical definition. This is our definition of faith: Faith is believing the Word of God and acting upon it, no matter how I feel, because God promises a good result.
Let’s break that definition down, so you can see how it will work in very practical ways in your life.
Faith is believing the Word of God.
That word believing is not “I hope so�
� as in, “Wouldn’t it be nice if . . .” It’s much more than that. Believing is a lot more than just shallow hope. Believing is, “I have all my eggs in that basket. I’ve got all my dreams in that place. I’m 100 percent in, and I don’t have an escape route.” That’s faith.
But faith is not believing in a vacuum; it’s belief based on the Word of God. That’s the key. Faith in what? My faith is in the Word of God! I’m not believing the newspaper or the television or my neighbor or my boss. God wrote a Book! I believe in a God who wrote a trustworthy Book.
I know the Bible is trustworthy because God cannot lie. The apostle Paul wrote in Titus 1:2, “In the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago.” Think about that: God cannot lie! Not won’t lie, like the promises we always hear. Not doesn’t lie, as in could but hasn’t yet. Cannot lie! Everything God has said is true, and it will happen exactly as He said. So it’s not foolish at all to put your confidence in a God like that. Faith is believing the Word of God. You say, “Well, if I think I believe—is that faith?” Here’s how you’ll know for sure:
By acting upon it. Faith without works is dead.
Genuine faith always downloads into life. There are all kinds of things that we say we believe—but must not really believe them because they don’t show up in the way we live. A physics professor who was teaching his class about pendulums and expended energy decided to prove a point with a demonstration. He had told his students that an untouched pendulum will always swing in an ever-decreasing series of arcs. If you start a pendulum swinging from a certain height, it never swings as high on the return trip. The teacher wrote out the mathematical formula, and he drew the picture for the whole class. He asked for questions and encouraged the class to tell him if they had any doubts about the principle. Then he asked, “How many people believe that this is actually true—that a pendulum swings in an ever-decreasing series of arcs?”
The class responded unanimously, “Oh, we believe that!” “Yes, of course, we believe that.”
“Well, that’s perfect,” said the teacher. “You’re now ready for the demonstration.” He walked over to a large steel ball hanging from a chain that was attached to one of the ceiling joists and reaching almost to the floor. To one side was an empty chair.
“This is how the demonstration will work,” he said. “Someone will sit in this chair. I’ll move the ball up to barely touch their chin and then I’m going to let it go. It’s going to swing away, down, across the room, and then back toward you. How many people believe that this ball will swing in ever-decreasing series of arcs, so there is no danger of getting hit as it swings back?” They all put their hands up.
“Who will be first to sit in the chair?” Guess how many people sat in the chair? Nobody. 1 Clearly, there’s a difference between saying you believe something and really believing it.
Now that’s a critical point, because it’s only when you sit in the chair—it’s only when you’re willing to put yourself at risk—that faith is active with God. Only when you come to the place where you say, “I know God’s grace is my only option—I’ve cut off all other backup plans. I have thrown myself upon God’s mercy.”
“Nothing in my hands I bring, only to Your cross I cling,” is the way the old hymn writer put it. That’s saving faith, and nothing short of that is making it with God. Faith is how we come to God and faith is how we grow in Him, too. Faith is believing the Word of God and acting upon it. The litmus test of genuine faith is “Do I act upon what I say I believe?”
ACTING UPON OUR FAITH MEANS ...
Acting upon our faith will impact every area of life, including our families, our finances, and even our sense of fulfillment. Let’s start with the family need. Let’s say that you’re a wife, and maybe your husband is not a believer. As a follower of Christ, you want more than anything for your home to be centered on God. Yet your spouse isn’t following the Lord. Maybe he goes to church with you sometimes—or maybe never. You’re like, “What should I do about this? How should I handle this? How can I influence him?”
God’s Word tells you how to handle it. In 1 Peter 3:1–5, the Scripture says that the unbelieving husband can be won through the conduct of the wife without her speaking a word. Now if you always shove taped sermons at him, give him Christian books to read (even this one), and plead with him to come to church, you are following your own well-meaning plan. But if you follow God’s plan in 1 Peter 3:1, you will “be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives.”
If you start the evenings with, “You’ve got to watch this video with me,” and continually hassle him by saying, “When are you going to accept the Lord?” you have a problem, and it isn’t your husband. You can say what you want to say about whether you believe the Word of God, but your actions say that you don’t. When we believe the Word of God and act upon it, that’s real faith.
In family matters, an active faith means we will trust God to work through a wayward child or even an unbelieving spouse. In finances, we will trust God to meet our daily needs, while giving tithes and offerings; we believe the Scripture that says, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
What about the need for fulfillment? Maybe you’re reading this with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Maybe you’re just discouraged about your life and your direction. You’re not sure where to turn, and you’re not sure what to pursue. What will be the answer for you?
Sadly, many who claim to be Jesus’ followers don’t turn to Him to meet their deepest life needs. They turn to a particular substance, or relationship. They expect things or experiences to fill that emptiness inside. But that’s actually a lack of faith in our Savior who said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). As you pursue the answer to the longings of your heart, faith determines where and to whom you turn.
Where do you believe the answers to life’s deepest perplexities are really found? Faith is believing the Word of God and acting upon it.
The next phrase in our definition of faith is: no matter how I feel.
That’s critical. Like the woman I just described who wants like anything just to talk to her husband about Christ. She’s having a hard time believing that she can’t be a big part of the solution by telling him some stuff! She feels that she has to say some things or he will never change. But faith discounts how we feel and boldly acts upon the Word of God.
Maybe you’re at a place of real financial hardship, and you feel giving a consistent tithe or offering to your church is unrealistic. I can understand the fears that limited funds can bring. When Kathy and I were in Bible college, we didn’t have two dimes to rub together. We had $180–$200 per week of expenses, and I was making $150 a week as a youth pastor. I can remember writing that little tithing check for $15 and thinking to myself, “What am I doing this for? I’m just getting further behind.”
Those were real feelings of fear and frustration, but they were nonsense compared to God’s faithfulness. God was teaching us some very important lessons about life. I learned that God is true to His Word and can be trusted to meet all of our needs if, by faith, we choose obedience and refuse to be guided by emotion. Here’s the best part of faith: We can act upon our faith, no matter how we feel, because . . .
God promises a good result.
Here are four questions I’ve heard from those struggling with faith:
-- “Why would I do what God tells me?”
-- “Why would I wait on God to bring my husband to Christ?”
-- “Why would I give of my finances when I have so many debts?”
-- “Why would I invest my energies in following hard after the Lord when I feel like my life is so empty and meaningless?”
The answer to each question is the same: Becau
se God promises a good result. That’s faith—believing the Word of God and acting upon it no matter how I feel, because God promises a good result.
THE BIBLE’S GRAND VIEW OF FAITH
I have a long-established habit of preaching from one passage of Scripture. We go through it carefully; we give attention to the details of God’s Word. But I also know that sometimes it helps to do a flyby of a Bible section to get that sort of overview feel. Sometimes you can study the details of God’s Word in such a way that you can’t see the forest for the trees. I’m telling you the forest, in the Bible, is faith. I usually want to walk up to one tree and describe it in detail. In the next few paragraphs, I want you see the flyby—the big picture.
Hebrews 11 offers a great landscape of faith to fly over. That chapter is full of what I call the “redwoods of faith,” the giants of the Old Testament. Their lives illustrate the prominence of faith. Hebrews 11:2–3 gets us airborne with a powerful challenge about the way faith looks at everything: “For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” Have you ever read a clearer answer to the lie of evolution than that statement, “What is seen [in the universe] was not made out of things which are visible” ?
Catch a glimpse of the forest of faithful ones!
Now let’s enter the forest of faithful ones, as recorded in verses 4–39. The trees are majestic, and remain as reminders for us of a faithful God to those who trust Him.
In verses 4–7, we’re reminded of the faith of Abel, Enoch, and Noah. Consider Noah, who “by faith...prepared an ark ” (verse 7). Everybody was laughing at him. “What a fool you are! Dumb boat. What are you going to do with that? You’re miles from a lake.” Those comments must have hurt, but Noah ignored his feelings (remember, “no matter how I feel”) and kept building by faith, because God had promised a good result. I am sure he became very discouraged at times, but he trusted God, and kept on keeping on. Verses 8–31 recount the faith of Abraham, Sarah, and other Old Testament believers, including the prostitute Rahab. Consider the list of these members of the Faith Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11:
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