What is FAITH? What does it mean? I have found an area of great misunderstanding within the church on this issue. This may give you a hint. The same word translated as "belief" is translated as "faith" in the bible. I’m not joking, look it up for yourself. There is only one Greek word that the translators of the bible had to choose from to translate as either "faith" or "belief" or "believe" or "believer". It is "pistos". "Pistos" is what is called the stem of a word. Different endings such as "is", "euo" and "oumen" added to this stem refer to different tenses and genders, like "speak", "speaking" and "speaker" in our English. Yet, instead of translating them as a common word, they were translated according to the theological understanding of the translators. Everyone knows what it means to believe something, but somehow we have a misunderstanding of what it means to have faith. Some theologians have interpreted it to mean that you cannot expect what you have faith in to really happen. Well, I have news for you. That is doubt, not faith. Faith is belief. If you have faith in something, that means you believe it.
The people in the world interpret "faith" as "blind faith". That is what they think Christians have, blind faith, and sadly in many cases that is true. But that is not what the bible refers to as faith. The reason the people in the world call faith blind is because to them faith is just another word for wish. They look at Christians and think we are just hoping that God is real. That is why they call religion a crutch. They don’t know that we KNOW God is real. We do not wish or hope that maybe God is real - we BELIEVE it - we know it.
So what does it mean to have faith? It means that you believe. Now, consider this statement of Jesus,
"And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive [them], and ye shall have [them]. (Mark 11:22-24) Notice He didn’t say, "hope that maybe they just might happen and when you see that you got them, then you can believe." No, He said just the opposite. He said we are supposed to believe we have them WHEN we pray, not after we have them. So what does this mean? How do we believe we have something before we can touch it or see it? By having faith, or belief in God that He will do for you whatever you ask of Him.
Now some of you might say, "Oh, so you believe God will just give you a Mercedes if you ask Him? Or a mansion?" Of course not. That is ridiculous. For one, why would you believe God will give you a Mercedes? I believe God will heal my body when I asked Him because He promised He would, and God doesn’t lie, but I don’t see anywhere in the bible God promises to give you a Mercedes so it would be impossible for me to have faith or believe I had received it.
Your belief, or faith that God will do something for you has to come from the bible. That way it is impossible to abuse this privilege. If you don’t KNOW God wants to do what you are asking Him to do, you CANNOT ask in faith. How can you believe you have what you ask for if you don’t even know if God wants you to have it? In other words you DOUBT whether or not God wants to give it to you. Well, that is NOT faith, that is doubt, and Jesus' brother James says,
"But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man [is] unstable in all his ways." (James 1:6-8)
If you waver when you ask of God, that means that you do not know for a certainty that God wants you to have what you are asking for, and you will NOT receive it. Period. So how can this be abused?
The critics of this understanding of faith claim we just demand stuff from God. Or they say that it doesn’t work because they asked God to do something for them and He didn’t do it. Well, it doesn’t sound like they believed they had it when they asked or they would have it. To say anything less is calling Jesus a liar. People like that don’t have any understanding of God as their Father. If you, as a child, had fallen down and broken your leg, would you go to your father and ask to be taken to the hospital with doubt in your heart that your father would do just that? Of course not, that’s silly. It is the same way with God. You have to KNOW God wants you to have something BEFORE you ask for it. You don’t come to God and say "please maybe" but "Thank You". That is why it is SO IMPORTANT to read your bible and have faith, or believe that God will teach you. It is only through the Word of God that we can understand what God’s desires are for us. If, for example, you ask God to heal you with the intention of going out and sinning afterwards, you will not get healed. My grandfather was a minister. He once went to a girls house to pray for her healing. She was bedridden. Instead of asking God to heal her, God gave him a word of knowledge about her situation. What God told him to tell her was that she wouldn’t be healed at that time because the only reason she wanted to be healed was so she could go and party with her friends. If she had known her bible, she would have realized that God wasn’t going to help her sin.
The reason I believe that God will heal me is because I know He wants to and I know I’m not asking for wrong motives. You see, you cannot ask God, in faith, for money if you know in your heart you are going to spend it on your own desires. God knows your heart, you can’t fool Him. If you ask for money to come to you so that you can have it to assist the needy or to give to a good cause on every occasion, so that you can be a giver and not a tight wad and you have faith that He will based on 2 Corinthians 9:8 which says,
"And God [is] able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all [things], may abound to every good work:", then you can expect it. Faith is not wishing God will do what you ask, it is knowing that God will do what you ask. If you don’t know what God wants you to have, read your bible again. It is the only place you can find God’s will for your life.
I cannot ask in faith that God keep me from being persecuted for the Word because he has told me through His Word that I will face persecution. Some of you reading this are probably thinking about persecuting me right now for stepping on you theological toes. I CAN believe that God will take care of me, meet all my needs and make sure I have enough to help others, again because He told me so in His Word.
I can also have faith that the bible is the Word of the Living God and that God Himself will teach me exactly what His Word means. He dealt with me on that issue like this.
His still, small voice asked me one day, " Do you believe I exist?"
I answered, "Yes Lord."
He said, " Do you believe I created the heavens and the earth?"
"Yes Lord, of course I do", I replied.
So He reasoned with me, "If I exist, and if I created the heavens and the earth, don’t you think I could write a book and get My Word into the earth?"
I said, "Well yes Lord, that sounds reasonable enough." You see, He basically pointed out that it was silly to believe He created the earth, yet doubt the authenticity of His word.
Then I tried reading the bible on my own. Big mistake. It didn’t make sense to me, it was confusing and boring. I was ready to give up when I received teaching from a man of God that God will instruct you in His Word, after all, He wrote it. He showed me where in the bible God says just that, Psalm 25:8: Good and upright [is] the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.
All you have to do is believe it. Have faith in God and
believe that He is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him, because He
is. Believe me.
M.F.