Greetings
I read over this little article and found it to be a very good reminder for me and I thought I would share it here. All to often the circumstances of this world that we see causes us to loose heart, or faith in what we know to be true. I am learning that the best way to deal with this is to keep my focus on Christ and not the things of this world.I want to keep my focus on the things that really matter, His Kingdom. The more some try to shake my faith, the more things in this world that try to pull me away from the Lord, the more I see my need for Jesus. He is always there guiding me on the narrow path. The one sure thing, the one real undisputable truth is that Jesus is faithful and that He never fails us. This is a truth that I can stand on and make it through any storm!

God Bless
maryjane



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Faith

Faith, for this discussion, we shall define as the willingness to believe in things you do not have any physical evidence for. (You have to take someone else’s word for it.)

Faith, in anything, is becoming as rare as gold as time progresses. It used to be that it required some degree of faith, even in your fellow man, to even have a normal life.

One hundred and fifty years ago, a pioneer in North Dakota probably had never seen or heard the President of the United States, but believed in him anyway, even though he only knew of him because of circumstantial evidence.

Nowadays, you can spend your whole life without having faith in anyone or anything. The President is on the news every night, information about every subject imaginable is widely disseminated and available at the push of a button. You can see and hear the evidence you need to believe in or refute anything you’d like.

People have become cynical, distrustful of others, and have an “I’ll believe it when I see it” attitude about everything.

This is exactly how satan wants it, and it is related to Daniel’s prophecy of “knowledge increasing in the last days.” To have faith in God requires one to go against the grain of “societal evolution” and the religion of the scientific method (observe, hypothesize, experiment, theorize, etc.).

Neither God nor the Kingdom of God are subject to, as Jesus said, “scientific observation” (meta parateôseoôs), nor will they perform their predicted reactions when put in the test tube and shaken (Jn. 3:8). Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult for people to believe in anything spiritually, rather than that which is scientifically, observationally or rationally discerned.

I say all this just as a reminder to myself and you that:

1. God still gets a kick out of the people who are willing to do what it takes to see things with their spiritual, rather than physical eyes. There are too many verses to mention, but one that comes to mind is when Jesus praised the Centurion for having faith in the unseen realm. (“I have not seen such faith in all of Israel!”) There aren’t too many instances in the entire Bible where any human being did anything that apparently impressed God or Jesus. This is one of them.

2. EVERYTHING in the world that satan rules is designed (in an ever increasingly more sophisticated way) to choke faith and foster cynicism, materialism, and despair. Like a software program that gets better with every release, when we think and live like the world and neglect what really matters, this “holograph earth” keeps getting more believable (though it is, according to God, only a shadow!). Meanwhile, the REALITY of the True substance of the universe (Jesus, His Word, His Church, His Spirit, true Light) becomes less and less discernible as we flex our “physical world discernment tools” (eyes, ears, mind)—and our Spiritual discernment continues to atrophy from lack of use.

Every problem I am having right now can be traced to a lack of faith. The lack of faith is caused by the dilemma described above—too much thinking like, caring about, acting like, discerning as, and rationalizing with mere mortals—and too little time with Jesus Christ getting to know Him and His glorious Kingdom and being molded into His likeness. Duh!

The Spirit of Christ, and His church are God’s agents to counteract the power of satan and the world to dull the spiritual senses of the man or woman of God. But nothing and no one can help the man or woman who will not spend the time required to know God in his or her inner man and see things with the eyes of faith. Even a man raised from the dead. SO, let’s get on our knees and stay clearly on the only Journey that is Real and Valuable?—tc

Hi maryjane...interesting article...can you tell me who the author is? Thanks

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James

Faith is NOT some intangible. Faith is genuine,
faith is real; as certain as GOD's Name and as
sure as His Holy Word. Faith can be evidenced,
faith can be witnessed.

Faith is a verb. Faith does, Faith works!!

KENNETH COPELAND

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Martin G. Smith

Greetings Jdl,
The author is tc and was written in 1998 I believe, I do not have any other information then that. I happened across it and found it to be very uplifting to me and thought it might be worth sharing:-)
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Greetings sojournaer7
Yes but Jesus said , "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."John chapter 20 verse 29. All I think the article was trying to say is that for some we get so caught up in the proof that the world demands and trying to see with our physical eyes that we miss what is plainly there before us. Your right faith is an action that we walk in, but as a believer I know that I know Jesus is real, and I do not need evidence to prove it. I do not need to see it with my physical eyes, just like I know that the air that I breath is real, even though I can not grasp it or see it in the physical. Jesus is real even though the world and mans worldly logic would try to say other wise. That is all I was sharing.
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In further sharing with some here and along the lines of studying faith, I found this also and found it to be really encouraging. I think it really fits nicely into the parable about the seeds that Jesus shared in the Word. Hope this will be a blessing to some here.

God Bless
mj


Faith That Will Hold On

“Faith is not a mood, nor a feeling. FAITH IS WILLINGNESS TO TAKE HOLD OF GOD’S LIVING WORD AND KEEP HOLD OF IT UNTIL IT TURNS INTO SUBSTANCE.... just as the soil must keep hold of the seed and stay true to the seed until the full-grown plant, locked in that tiny seed, has materialized.” (excerpt from the booklet By Faith)