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Faith

             And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

 

The first of the characteristics listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7 is faith. I’m debating with an atheist and at the moment, the issue revolves around the terms belief and  faith. Her question this morning was why one had to have faith in order to believe in a god. In the Bible, the word they translate as belief is transliterated pistis. The word they translate as faith is transliterated pistis. Or, if I have the form of the word wrong, it is derived from that root word. Effectively, belief equals faith. The dictionary tries to differentiate between them by describing faith as “complete” belief but what do we then do with Jesus’ driving out a demon from the son of a father who said, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)? What do we do about Jesus’ claim that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we can do great things?

Part of the problem is that having complete belief every second of every day is impossible. It’s like trying to hold a ten-pound weight over your head for the rest of your life. What are you going to do when you sleep? What are you going to do when your arm falls asleep because you’ve had it elevated for so long? It’s a great thing to be able to lift a ten-pound weight over your head. But that doesn’t mean you have to do it 24/7. Equally, it’s good thing to be able to have complete faith, but to have complete, conscious, and active faith all the time would be exhausting. In this moment your complete faith may be a resting faith. It’s there. It can be awakened to ten-pound faith, or (if we’ve been practicing) one hundred-pound faith if the need arises.

I’m not saying there are times when we don’t need to have faith in the general sense. But different circumstances require different activity levels of faith. You don’t need the same level of faith to cross a street that has one car on it as you do to cross one with five hundred cars on it. But you absolutely must have at least some level of faith in God in order to seek and maintain a relationship with Him, which is the only way to please Him.

 

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