What is faith?

What is faith?

You can go to a dictionary and find several definitions of what faith is…

• confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
  
• belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
  
• belief in god or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
  
• belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
  
• a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
  
• the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith (From dictionary.com)
  

Faith can be explained, true faith is lived out.

Bad things happen all of the time.

Dave Ramsey's FPU program stated that every 10 years a family will go through a major crisis that often results in a financial crisis.

Bad things are never fun to go through.

I have heard the most solid of faith people question where is God when all this bad stuff is happening?

People have come to me and asked this.

If God is real why am I going through this?

I wish I had an answer for them that would solve their problem, most of the time I don't.

I can listen, I can pray for them, but I might not have the answer they desire.

Faith is interesting like that.

The disciples even had their lack of faith.

They were with Jesus to see him heal people, bring people back from the dead, see the worst of sinners repent and turn away from their sins and they still had lack of faith.

In Luke chapter 8 starting with verse 22, Jesus tells the disciples they are going to go across the lake.

As they are traveling a storm hits.

During this, Jesus is asleep.

The disciples, some of which were fisherman, I would guess they have been through storms before.

Yet there was still a lack of faith.

They knew they were going down, through all this, Jesus was asleep.

Finally they woke him up.

This is his response in some of verse 24 and 25…

"He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided and all was calm. Where is your faith?" he asked his disciples."

They were amazed.

This is people that have seen the miracles Jesus has done before and they are in fear and wonder about the power of Jesus.

They had lack of faith.

This shows that we all can fall short and have lack of faith.

One of the commentaries (Wiersbe's Expository Outlines) I read on it said this…

"What was their problem? The same problem God's people face today: we know the Word of God, but we do not believe it when we face the tests of life. It is one thing to learn the truth and quite something else to live it. "Where is your faith?" is still the key question. Are we trusting God's promises, or are we trusting ourselves or our circumstances?"

Man, if there were lines that pierce the heart, this would be it.

"Are we trusting God's promises, or are we trusting ourselves or our circumstances?"

Everyone goes through times of hurt and struggle.

What are you going to rely on?

If you feel you got handed a bad card and God has something against you, I'm sorry you feel that way.

Truly I am.

If you feel that God's word has no way of helping you, read the book of Job.

If there is someone that had everything and lost it all, it was Job, yet he still had faith.

If you don't have a Bible go to biblegateway.com.

I pray that you will find faith during the tough times ahead.

Have a great day.