What is faith?

What is faith? What does it mean to have faith in God? Here is an analogy. You are in desperate need of some money to pay off a debt. If you do not pay back that debt your house will be repossessed and you will have nowhere to live. Would you run into the street and ask any odd stranger for the money or would you approach someone whom you know would help you? Most of us would probably approach someone whom we know would help us. Why we would we do this? First, we know that the person has the ability to help us. Second, we know that person personally. It may be a friend, a brother or someone very close to us. Third, we know the person will certainly help us.

Faith in God is exactly like that. To have faith in God, you need to 1) know that He has the ability to do the things you ask for in prayer i.e. to acknowledge Him as God, 2) know Him personally i.e. His character and His nature and 3) know that He will certainly do the things you ask for in prayer i.e. His will. It goes without saying that when you ask for things in prayer, you are not issuing instructions to God expecting Him to satisfy your demands but rather you are making requests expecting God to graciously grant them. Also, it is common knowledge that God will not do anything He does no want to do. Therefore you may ask for something in prayer and God will not grant it if He does not want to. Why? Simply because it is not His will to do whatsoever you have asked for. In that case, no amount of prayer and fasting and the giving of tithes and offerings will move God’s hand. That truth in itself offers some insight into what faith in God really entails. Here is another analogy.

If you have tickets to go and watch Manchester United play and you have two friends to choose from and you knew that one of them is a Manchester United fan while the other hates Manchester United, which one of them would you invite to watch the football match with you? Chances are you would ask the one who supports Manchester United. Why? Based on your knowledge of your two friends, you know that if you ask the Manchester United fan he will say yes but if you ask the other he will say no. Likewise with God, for we need to know God’s will and have that intimate knowledge of Him so that we know what to ask for in prayer. You would not ask for certain things if you knew they were not part of God’s will and so you would ask for things you knew for a fact that they are a part of God’s will. That is what it means to have faith in God – knowing God intimately. 1 John 5 v 14-15 says, “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” Clearly our confidence in God comes from us knowing that if we ask for anything in accordance with His will He will hear our prayer and if we know that He hears our prayer, we have whatever we have asked of Him. That is faith.

It’s no surprise then that we start in Hebrews 11 v 1, to further explain what faith is, which says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That is the definition of faith. Substance means the very material of those things you are hoping for. What that means is faith represents the things you hope for. To understand what that means we move on to the word evidence. Evidence is the proof, confirmation or verification of those things you are hoping for. Though you cannot see them, you already have the proof that you have them. What embodies that proof? It is the word of God. Romans 10 v 17 says, “So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” You cannot have the substance of the things you hope for unless the word of God provides evidence for it. That means unless you know the word of God, you cannot have faith. If you tell me you believe that you have been saved by grace through faith and that being the gift of God not based on what you have done, and I ask you to show me the evidence for your confidence, you will turn to the word of God as your evidence for the hope of salvation that you have. Now God has chosen to reveal Himself to us through His word therefore we can only beginning to know who God is by studying the word of God and through our Bible study, we begin to know God, His nature, His character and His will. As our knowledge of God increases, our faith in Him increases.

Obviously what I have written may be a little too abstract for some of you and you may be asking how this can be applied in day to day living. That’s a good question. If I kneel down and ask God to send more evangelists to preach to gospel, what evidence can I show you that God will grant my request? Matthew 9 v 37, “Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly [is] plenteous, but the labourers [are] few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” There is my evidence. I know for a fact, based on this verse, that if I ask God to send more evangelists into the world to preach the gospel, He will do it because His word confirms it to be His will. But that’s all too easy you say. What about when I ask for a car, a job, a house, a wife, a husband, healing or financial assistance, what evidence should I have that God has granted me what I have asked for? The Bible has much to say about that. There is no specific verse in the Bible that says “God shall give you that X” X representing whatever you are asking for. However, the Bible says in Matthew 6 v 8, “Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” What we need to pick up from this verse is that God knows what we need and therefore we need to ask Him to give us what we need not what we don’t need. There may be things in life that we desire but do not need. God will not grant us those things because we do not need them. So if, according to God, X falls out of the category “need”, it is therefore out of His will. I have learnt from personal experience that God will not grant me that which I desire but do not need. I have looked back and seen that there were many things I asked for that were not granted and after making an assessment, I realized that I did not need them. For example, when I was a child I would ask God to appear to me in a dream so that I could, so I thought, solidify my faith in Him. I thought if I had a vision of God, I would never doubt His existence ever again. Obviously that request was not granted but through His word and other personal experiences, God has more than confirmed to me that He is real so I did not need to see a vision of Him. Therefore in light of material possessions, we should ask God to give us the ones we need and to know which ones to ask for, we should ask God to show us what our need truly is.

After Jesus had said the words in Matthew 6 v 8, from Matthew 6 v 9-13, He recites the Lord’s Prayer as a model for all our prayers. A short study of the prayer shows that God wants us to desire His kingdom to come and His will to be done. He wants us to request Him to give us our daily bread; remember Jesus Christ is the bread of life. He wants us to ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness has to do with seeking His righteousness. When God forgives you, He washes you clean by the blood of the Lamb and counts you as righteous. He wants us to request that He helps us not to fall into temptation and deliver us from evil which has to do with sanctification. Clearly every prayer we pray should be seeking God’s will for our lives not our own will for our lives. When you say a prayer that is in accordance with God’s will, you have all the assurance in the world that God will grant you that request. For the purposes of practical application, faith is knowing the will of God. From day to day, our prayer life should be about seeking God’s will. If I ask God for a house, He may say to me, “Don’t tell me what you think you need but rather seek to know what I know you need”. The lost do not know they need a Saviour until the word is preached to them, likewise you will not know what you need until God shows you. There are many different ways in which God deals with us and He deals with us according to His will. There are many lessons God teaches us but He will not teach them the same way to all of us. Understanding that God will deal with us individually according to His will and intimate knowledge of us, after all “your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him”, we should then understand that He will only grant us what He wants us to have. In light of that truth should we then not unceasingly seek His will? Is it then not obvious that the more you know God’s will, the more you have faith in Him?

But what does Jesus mean when He says in Mark 11 v 22-24, “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.]” Not only is faith knowing God’s will, it is also trusting God’s will by acting upon it. What do I mean? To trust God’s will is to believe that whatever He says He will do, He will do it. If God says He is going to heal you, to have faith means you trust that He is actually going to do it. This is what Jesus is dealing with in this verse. You can see from the passage He says, “…shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass…” This portion of the passage is dealing with trust. Many people think you can “blindly” ask for anything and just “believe” and so you will get it. That is mental faith. Faith is not a state of mind. Faith is knowing and trusting God. You trust that if you repent and place you faith in Jesus Christ you will be forgiven. God said so, you believed and when you acted upon it, He granted your request for salvation. Jesus is showing us that God will only grant us our requests in accordance with His will if we trust that what He says His will is, is true. When God made His promise to Abraham, Genesis 15 v 6, says “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” Only when Abraham believed God’s will to be true, did God make His promise stand. When the gospel is preached, some people believe it to be true and act upon it trusting that what God has said is true. Because they trust that what God has said is true and act upon that trust, they have their petitions granted. What about when He says, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive [them,] and ye shall have [them.]”, doesn’t that mean that as long as I desire it and believe that it will come to pass, then I will have it. Not exactly so, for if I believe that God wants something for me when it’s not part of His will, He will not grant it. So how do we marry God’s will and our desires so that we can believe that whatsoever we desire if we believe God will grant them? Philippians 2 v 13 says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of [his] good pleasure.” From this verse we learn that it is God Himself who gives us these Godly desires. God works in us to desire His will and by His Spirit we pray in accordance to it and He grants it to us. Sometimes we do not know what to pray for and God helps us as confirmed by Romans 8 v 26-27, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what [is] the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to [the will of] God.”

Conclusion
For you to have faith in God you need to believe that He exists. Hebrews 11 v 6 says, “…for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” How do we know that He exists? Genesis 1 v 1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This verse already tells us that God exists. If you believe that God exists, that is the first step to having faith in God. Believing that God exists, is not enough because James 2 v 11 says, “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” After believing that God exists, you need to believe what the Bible says about God is true and follow through with action. James 2 v 26 says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” This means you need to know who God is, believe it to be true and obey. The Bible says God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, has no beginning and no end, is accountable to no one but all are accountable to Him, will punish all sinners but forgive those that repent and if you believe it to be true and act upon it in accordance with His will, that my dear brothers and sisters is faith. In essence faith is threefold; to know God, to believe God and to obey God. You have to know God (know He exists, His nature and His character), believe God (accept His word as true and hold as truth every word that He speaks) and obey God (act upon what His word tells you to do) for you to have faith in God. This is a call to a relationship with God. You can only trust God if you believe what He says is true. You can only know His will if you invest a lot of time into building a relationship with Him and that is through prayer and studying His word. Psalm 25 v 14 says, “The secret of the LORD [is] with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.” You can only begin to know the secret of the Lord, which is very intimate knowledge of Him, when you have the fear of the Lord i.e. a pure and holy reverence of God in the highest form. This includes holding His word to be true without question, submitting to His Lordship, trembling at His word and avoiding sinning against Him because you know of His justice and judgment. Proverbs 1 v 7 says, “The fear of the LORD [is] the beginning of knowledge.” Your knowledge of whom God is, your submission to His Lordship, and your obedience to His word is faith and because God guarantees our faith, in a way you could say to know God is the substance of things hoped for and His Word is the evidence of things unseen. God bless you.