Character Qualities of a Christian- Faith

I like starting off my articles with simple questions that turn out to be not so simple, so I mustn’t stop now. What is faith? These three words have challenged me recently to discover the answer to this seemingly simple question. Jim Cymbala describes faith as “total dependence upon God that becomes supernatural in its working”¹. Just to give you a couple visuals, think of faith as an invisible bridge over a canyon that you must leap out onto. If you take that leap, that is faith. For me, it’d take a whole lot of faith to jump out of a plane in the sport known as skydiving. I’d be trusting the guide who was with me, but more importantly the parachute holding me up.

            The popular band Kutless released a song in 2011 called “What Faith Can Do”, and it is just a vivid description of the power of faith. That is just one example of many, many songs written about faith, and even in secular circles, the word and concept of faith is popular. Everybody has faith in something, in fact, we often have faith without even knowing it. Imagine you are out running and get a painful cramp, so you decide to sit down for a moment on a park bench. Stop. Did you see what you just did? You didn’t even examine the park bench to make sure that it was assembled correctly, with every screw in the correct place, you just plopped down on it. Pastor Johnny Aseltine uses this equation to describe faith: faith=dependence.

            Open up your Bible to Hebrews 11, a popular place of reference when talking about faith, but I just want to look two verses here, the first being verse 6. Hebrews 11:6 says “But without faith it is impossible to pleas Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” The second is Hebrew 11:1, “How faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The word ‘substance’ can be used interchangeably in this instance with the word ‘realization’. Realization, in its most basic form is basically the process of something becoming real. So faith is what makes hopes become reality. The second half of that verse is interesting as well. Faith is the ‘evidence’ or ‘confidence’ of things not seen. So faith fills us with confidence about things that are not seen, such as God, although His work is very evident.

            Before moving forward, let’s just take a second and look back over what all that information that I just threw at you was. Let’s just make a small list here:

Faith is _______.

1. Total dependence

2. What makes hopes become reality

3. What gives us confidence about things that cannot be seen

            There you go, that’s my rambling condensed into three points. Now if I can just have two more minutes of your time, I would just like to expand on something I mentioned previously. Everyone has faith in something. Like sitting on a park bench and depending on it not to crumble underneath you, faith in God renders you powerless. Your life is like the control room of a rocket, someone has to be in control. Faith is when we surrender ever button, lever, joystick, and control to God. It doesn’t take a lot of faith to ride in a car with someone else driving, especially if they’re experienced, so… NEWS FLASH! God has way more experience with the controls of lives than any person could possibly have driving a car. When we ride in a car with someone else driving, our temporal/earthly lives are in their hands, but when we let God have the controls, our eternal lives are in his hands. So why is it so hard to have faith in Him?

            Staying with the car idea, imagine that the driver of the car that you are in is speeding and the cop stops you and writes the speeding ticket out. Is he going to give the ticket to you or the driver? The driver gets it, of course, because the driver of a car is responsible for any illegal actions. Well, let me tell you, everyone is going to be given something even worse than a speeding ticket… death. We all will have to pay the price, so are you going to let God be the driver and pay that price for you, or are you going to try to take the price by yourself? As Christians, we need to be totally depending on God for everything we need. So who’s driving your car?

¹ Fresh Faith, Jim Cymbala (1999) page 16