Excerpted from The Spirit Life Bible School
1. What Faith Isa. God’s character is the foundation for faithTo begin we will first define faith. We will consider both what faith IS and what it IS NOT.
To lay a foundation for all that follows in these sessions, which will deal much with principles and practical application of those principles, we must first stress that the doctrine of faith cannot be divorced from relationship with God. Many of the principles we speak of over the following sessions can be exercised with some result apart from a vital union with God. The New Age and the Motivational world of humanism is replete with books and teachings concerning positive confession for example, with testimonies of amazing results. Biblical faith and its exercise however is rooted first and foremost in a love relationship with our Father in Heaven through Jesus Christ.
The first definition we will give for faith then is simply this:
“TRUST in another or another’s Word.” The Greek word, “pistes”, translated ‘faith’ in the New Testament simply means: “Trust, assurance, confidence in another and another’s word.” To have faith in God means to trust Him, to trust His Word and have confidence that He will keep it.
Faith works by love. It is our love relationship with a God whom we know and trust which provides the seedbed for fearless confidence in His Word. We trust and act on His Word, because we trust Him, and know that His thoughts and intentions toward us are entirely good.
Andrew Murray in his exposition of Hebrews, ‘The Holiest of All’ exhorts believers to go beyond the mechanics of faith to discover its Source: “Faith is much more than trust in the word of another,” he says, “That trust is of extreme importance as its initial exercise, but the word must only be the servant leading into the divine truth it contains, the living person from whom it comes. To deal too exclusively with the word as the ground of faith will lead to a faith that is more intellectual than spiritual, a faith that, as the Church so universally shows, rests more in the wisdom of men, in the power of reason, than in the power of God. We need to be persuaded very deeply that faith is not only a dealing with certain promises, but an unceasing spiritual intercourse with the unseen world around us.”
Andrew Murray, ‘The Holiest of All’, KCM publications, ISBN 0-8010-5763-9
God’s own character is the very bedrock for every other action of faith. The Bible says that He is the faithful one, and that He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim 2:13). He is the God of Faith, the very Source!
This truth is important to remember to prevent us from unwittingly entering a religion of works where we merely apply spiritual principles in order to get desired results, and forget that God did not send His Son merely so we could be healed and prosperous – He sent His Son for something far greater than that, that we could know Him:
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3 NKJV)
Many philosophies today, even some which purport to be Christian, do not believe that God is a Person. They consider God as the perfect Mind, or the Universal Consciousness, yet they refuse to locate Him. They have a faith in certain principles or concepts, ones which undoubtedly have wrought great changes in their lives, yet they cannot bring anyone into fellowship with the Father, or produce a New Creation. True faith is first and foremost in a Person – the Person of God.
