The speaker on the radio stated that faith was
faith because we can’t prove it. My logical, proof-preferring self, went,
“Wow!! Is he ever right!!” God never intended for us to be able to
prove the essence of our Christian faith. For all the digging we can
sometimes do, for all the ancient manuscripts we can scrutinize, for all the
historical accounts we can lay beside our Bibles, for all the arguments we can
find cleverly devised words for – for all of this, we still come back to the
fact that what faith believes cannot be proven. God’s Word itself does
not attempt to prove the existence of God, but then neither does God’s Word
attempt to prove itself. We must accept both by faith, and
base our lives, our beliefs, our reasoning, our purpose, and our eternity on
what we cannot prove. For some of you, that is a relief. You are as
logical and proof-preferring as I am, and you have this inner hankering to
somehow touch and feel, see and fully comprehend, and have a sense of concrete
objectivity. But, you can’t. And that is the
essence of faith.
Hebrews 11 tells us, “Faith is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.” But we still can’t prove any of it. It goes on, “By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command.” We can argue and debate, and present lofty sounding analysis and comparisons, but we still can’t prove it. The skeletal foundation of our faith is presented in the words, “It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.”
Faith causes people to attempt the impossible and the illogical and sometimes it even runs contrary to normal human instinct. Noah built an immensely large “boat,” because water was going to come down out of the sky, and a lot of it, something that had never happened before. Abraham had no idea where he was going, but God said, “go,” and Abraham went. He and his wife, Sarah, astounded gynecological history when they listened to a promise that said two not-quite-centenarians would have a baby. And a number of years later, the baby born of that promise, was brought before God as a sacrifice, and Abraham was still holding onto his faith! Jump to the end of Hebrews 11, and you find faith “rewarded” with torture, death by a sword or stones, and the “lucky” ones just had their backs cut open with whips, were chained in dungeons, or wandered aimlessly about, animal skins for clothes, their bellies hungry for food.
Hebrews 11 tells us, “Faith is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.” But we still can’t prove any of it. It goes on, “By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command.” We can argue and debate, and present lofty sounding analysis and comparisons, but we still can’t prove it. The skeletal foundation of our faith is presented in the words, “It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.”
Faith causes people to attempt the impossible and the illogical and sometimes it even runs contrary to normal human instinct. Noah built an immensely large “boat,” because water was going to come down out of the sky, and a lot of it, something that had never happened before. Abraham had no idea where he was going, but God said, “go,” and Abraham went. He and his wife, Sarah, astounded gynecological history when they listened to a promise that said two not-quite-centenarians would have a baby. And a number of years later, the baby born of that promise, was brought before God as a sacrifice, and Abraham was still holding onto his faith! Jump to the end of Hebrews 11, and you find faith “rewarded” with torture, death by a sword or stones, and the “lucky” ones just had their backs cut open with whips, were chained in dungeons, or wandered aimlessly about, animal skins for clothes, their bellies hungry for food.
So why hold onto all this “foolishness”??? Faith reveals to
us the God we cannot see. Faith gives us a right standing, an approval,
an acceptance, before the holiness of our God. Faith creates hope.
Faith becomes the balancing scale of what has worth and value, and what
doesn’t. Faith gives us purpose. Faith gives confidence.
Faith relieves our fears of the temporal, and literally opens our eyes to the
eternal. Faith strengthens and encourages, and causes us to move
forward. Faith shouts to us from the pages of biblical history and from
the lives today of other believers. Why?
Because there is for all of us far better things in the mind of our God, things
for our benefit, the prize to be received at the end of our earthly race.
–
Bev
(Related Bible reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Hebrews 11:1-40)
