Believing God

The Bible talks a lot about faith. It puts a huge emphasis on faith in relation to our relationship with God. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that it is the bedrock, the foundation of relationship with God. “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” it says. (Hebrews 11:6).

What is faith? At the heart of it, it is about believing who God says he is, believing that he does what he says he does (even when there is little or no proof to support it). The writer of the book of Hebrews puts it succinctly: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” It is more than deciding to believe a particular idea. It is certainly more than deciding to believe something because we wish it to be true. It is a sure hope, a hopeful certainty, a deep trust ... and it is allowing that faith to shape our thoughts, our words and our actions. True faith always translates into action.

If God, out of Love has to judge our choices, but if God out of Love equally allows a time of grace, a time in which we can re-align ourselves, our lives and our decisions, with his Love, faith plays a huge part in how we choose to live. We have to act out of faith and not by what we see in the immediate. We have to “live by faith and not by sight”. We choose how we live not because we can see who God is and what he is like, but because we believe him and fully trust that he is who he says he is. 

So faith, acting out of a trust in God even if the evidence is unseen, acting out of trust in what God has said even if humanly speaking the odds are against you, becomes the basis of a relationship with God.

Relationship with God, responding to God’s Love, is always and has always been a matter of faith. But as in any relationship, God doesn’t wait until our faith is perfect. He takes whatever response towards him we have, however small – and he meets us more than half way. With every step that we deepen in our trust of Him, his character and his promises, he draws us deeper into him. Every time we choose to trust him a bit deeper, he reveals a little bit more of Himself to us.

We see this again and again in the lives of people depicted in the Bible. The Bible is full of the stories of ordinary people who choose to believe that God is who he says he is. They choose to believe that when God promises, he keeps his word and does what he promises to do. And it is through their response to God in faith, believing God translated into action, that God works in and through them in extraordinary ways.

The Bible is very clear that it is the faith of these people, not what they achieved and did, that is of value to God. It is their faith, their response to God even against the odds, that is the basis of their relationship with God and the reason God is able to enter into and deepen in His relationship with them. It is faith that saves us from this broken world we live in.

Faith matters.