Where is your Faith

Hebrews 11

11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.

3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

When you have time this week, please read the versus from Hebrews 2: 4-9

Jump down to verse 13

13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.

14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.

15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

So in these verses of Hebrews the Bible speak of this great men & women over coming the obstacles with great faith and strength. So where did this great faith come from? Have they been given something more than what we have been given? Where there struggles any greater than ours? Or maybe did they just stand on their faith differently than we do.

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

23 By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son.

21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

Where is your Faith?

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Faith appears at first sight a very simple thing; it is nothing else but believing the word of God. We know what it is to receive the word of a man, to believe statements, thought strange and surpassing our experience, because we regard the character of him who makes them with respect and confidence. But then, remember, as God is greater than man, as God's word is heaven, high above any human word, so the reception of this word, the believing of this word, is necessarily something quite different from the reception of any human word or testimony. As is the voice, so is the echo; as is the seal, so is the impression; as is the word or revelation, so is the faith. The Divine word produces in the heart of man faith, which is Divine in its nature and power. To assent to the word of God is therefore to enter into a perfectly new life, a perfectly new mode of power and existence.

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faith takes hold of the Divine word; it is weak or strong, great or small, as it receives, keeps, and uses, the word of God. The source of weak faith is in the ignorance and slowness of the heart with reference to the Divine testimony.

The strength of faith is the humility of a helpless and broken heart cleaving to the promise.

There was one who, showed great faith, whom we all admire for his faith.

Martin Luther King!

Often he confessed that, unless every day he read the Scriptures, and meditated on Christ, and repeated the Creed, and prayed the Psalms, his heart became dead.

He said, Let us dwell then on Christ; let us consider Him in steadfast, frequent, daily meditation; let the word of Christ dwell richly in our hearts, minds; and homes.

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Consider what faith is. We too often think and speak of it as a speculative faculty, co-ordinate with reason, and differing from reason only in being concerned with a different subject matter;

while reason assures us that honesty is the best policy, or that probability is the guide of life, or that the laws of nature are uniform,

faith supplies us with similar judgments about God, and spirit, and immortality; judgments that is, which may or may not have an important bearing on our lives, but which are exhausted, as far as faith is concerned.

Sight, intuition, vision, by whatever name you call it, is a higher thing than reason, for it is that in which reason ends; and faith is higher than even sight, for it is sight become creative.

Faith sees into darkness, believes without evidence, is certain of impossibilities, grapples with and forces the blank, dark, empty nothingness into substance, and consistency, and reality, and life;

it is the reflection, almost too bright for frail human nature, of the Divine power that can elevate man to his highest purpose.

Faith is here opposed to sight. It is, in the first place, the resting of the soul upon the unseen.

The writer says, faith has been the common feature of all great, heroic, saintly deeds and lives.

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Every one whose name was great in its history, its founders, legislators, rulers; its warriors, and its martyrs; its prophets, and its poets; those without its limits who had helped it in days of adversity; all had one common characteristic.

They all confessed that they were fallowing the will of God through their faith.

We believe that God is, for He has spoken to us; He has loved us, He has redeemed us. He was Abraham's guest and guide, his sure portion, and exceeding great reward. He brought Israel out of Egypt. He spoke unto the fathers as unto His chosen friends. Jehovah reveals to us that He is the Lord, the Creator of heaven and of earth; that He made all things by the word of His power. He reveals to us that all things were made by His Son, and for Him, who is appointed Heir of all things; that not atoms, or an original matter, but Christ, is the beginning of creation, in whom all His counsel stood before Him from all eternity.

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How does God carry out His work of continuous redemption? It is by the energy of His chosen few. Into their hearts He pours the power of His Spirit; upon their heads He lays the hands of His consecration.

The sinner through faith in the sacrifice is righteous before God, belongs now to God, and is an heir of eternal life. Sin and death have no more dominion over him. Thus Enoch, the seventh from Adam, walks with God. In this simple familiar expression we have the description of the new life; it brings before us communion with God, dependence on His guidance, submission to His authority, confidence in His love and favour, continuous, habitual fellowship, and a mind conformed to God's mind, and delighting itself in the Lord.

Concluison

Faith realized:

One of the marks of the saints of God is their heavenward look. They are in the world, but not of the world; strangers, not citizens. Their acts, their failures, their sacrifices, their sufferings, are here, but their hearts and their treasures are above.

There are some who seem to think, the Christian warrior believes through his faith, the dimmer the hope, the nobler the sacrifice, the he or she can see the vision of God’s hand guiding them through the storms of life.

The one devotes himself to the service of humanity, asking for nothing again; the Christian fixes his eyes on the glories of heaven, and calculates the overplus of future happiness which will more than compensate for present suffering.

To-day we fix our eyes on the true champions of our faith, on those who have made full proof of their ministry, and have shown the world, by visible proof, what it may be to be a follower of Christ.

AMEN

If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.