Why is faith so important to the believer? How can we find faith for any circumstance? Is faith a requirement for Christianity?
These are vital questions for the true Christian, because faith is an essential to discipleship. This is the first in a series that will focus on the basics of faith and how it is accessed.
Jesus said we should have faith in God (Mark 11:22). By this He meant that faith makes the difference to everything, but it has to begin with the right kind of faith, which is faith in God. We can’t merely have faith in anything or anyone besides God and the principles to which He introduces us.
The faith Jesus was talking about is absolute faith in God. We can’t be half-hearted about faith. This kind of faith comes from God as a free gift. So how do we find it? How do we access it? He has given us the Word of God that can actually bring faith into our lives.
Hearing is believing
Isaiah says, “LORD, who has believed our report?” So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Romans 10:16-17
We have to position ourselves to hear the Word that comes from God. By this I mean we have be available, conscious and hungry or thirsty to know and hear the report that has been sent out through the whole earth.
Not to just hear it with our ears, but with our whole mind, will and being. Our ears are the gateway to the spoken Word of God. When the gospel is preached it has the dynamic of faith that can enter our hearts. It is eminently believable to those who desire to know God.
Our eyes are the avenue through which we read and absorb His Word. The Logos, the written Word, can become the Rhema, the Living Word, as if it is being spoken to us by Jesus Himself. It is alive and powerful (Heb.4:12).
Our senses, then, open us up to receive the Word that delivers faith, but it is our spirit that comes alive to its dynamic. So, although we hear and see through our senses, the Word is spiritual, called the Living Word.
It brings us closer to a place where our spirit, once dead to God through sin, is made alive the very first time we truly hear and receive it to an extent that we believe it and accept it as true, which in turn gives us the ability to continually receive and grasp the Word that enlivens us spiritually, and, by association, naturally and mentally.
The dynamic of this is truly amazing, a living marvel, and could be said to be miraculous in a transforming way.
Activating the Word
This word for ‘hearing’ is actually based on a supernatural hearing. In Isaiah 53:1 God asks the question, “Who has believed our report?” This literally means the same as ‘the hearing,’ or ‘the message that is preached.’ “Who has heard the hearing?” It is a message that is passed from generation to generation. It is heard and passed on.
But this hearing is a specific kind of hearing. It is the message that comes from God. It is a call. It is a summons. It is His report; the glad tidings, or good news that we also call ‘the gospel,’ which is simply another word meaning ‘good news.’ So, who has heard it?
By this He also means, “who has heard, believed, and obeyed it?” In Romans 10:16, God questions, through Isaiah, whether His people, who were then Israel, have actually believed the announcement of the good news. He says, “they have not all obeyed the gospel.” Hearing is one thing, but it has to be matched by believing and acting upon it.
Faith comes by hearing, but it is activated by believing, and believing means accepting the message and taking responsibility for cooperating with its instructions and precepts.
Israel largely failed because they did not mix the Word with faith.
For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.
Hebrews 4:2
They could not believe because their hearts were hardened and their eyes were blinded through disbelief. Even Jesus, with all the signs and wonders He performed before them, could not get through to His people.
But although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him, that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?”
John 12:37-38
So we cannot be like them. We are not in a position, as Gentiles, that dampens our receptiveness to the Word of God that saves. God is giving us a second chance to change, to turn away from the worldliness that formerly captured us, into the life that He has prepared for us before the dawn of time.
God has sent the gospel throughout the earth as a message that calls us to Him. Our response should be a willingness to accept and believe the message, to respond to the summons, and to come before Him ready to become His people of faith.
Action
How do we know we have received His Word and faith has taken? We will act on the Word. We will put into practice what we have heard. We will make a point of both articulating the Word and doing the Word.
Faith is demonstrated by works. We are not saved by works. We are saved by grace through faith, but we are saved for good works.
Those works, or corresponding action to our faith, only become valid after we have been saved. We cannot do the works of God, or that He has called us to without faith.
So we hear the report, we believe the report, we receive the report, we articulate the report, and we act on the report. That is faith in action.
