Morning Devotion: What is Faith?

The Origins of Faith

(Week One, Day One)

What is Faith?

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hebrews 11:1 (KJV)

Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

So often in life we rely solely on what we can see or what we can feel. We know we do a good job at work by the fact that we receive recognition, whether by a promotion, a raise or just words of affirmation. We know we are good friends when those we count as friends come to us when they are in need. They have learned to trust us or to have confidence in us, and they turn to us, knowing we will be there for them. Even our feelings have to be built on something real and tangible, something we can hold on to, because otherwise they quickly blow away.

Faith in God doesn’t work that way though…

Whereas we can see the temporal things of this earth, we can’t see the spiritual. (2 Corinthians 4:17) The spiritual remains the indefinable and indescribable. It is based on the fundamental basis of hope, and hope alone…. Hope in the promises of the Lord, hope in the assurances of Christ’s salvation, hope in the blessings of eternity in His Holy Kingdom.

To properly understand what this means we need to go back and properly understand what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews meant. The word that’s used for substance, “ὑπόστασις” (hupostasis), means confidence, to have a sure foundation. Faith is then the confidence we have that our hopes are built with the surest of cores. It is based on the supernatural evidence that is presented to us in the fulfillment of past promises.

You see, in our lives, hope cannot be seen. When it is, it ceases to be hope any longer. After all, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, who finds hope in what it is that they already have? (Romans 8:24) Yet, in looking to the lives of the Saints and the Disciples, the Prophets and the Faithful in generations past we have born witness to the assurances that God has made, the strength that was drawn from it, and the blessings that were bestowed upon their lives even when trial and tribulation were all around them.

It’s here then that we have to distinguish between faith and hope, understanding that they are inescapably linked together in a wondrous and miraculous relationship that they have. In faith we have the full assurance of eternity and the blessings therewith, and with hope we have the full confidence that we shall receive that reward. Hope then becomes the vehicle that takes us along a road of faith, carrying us forward to the Kingdom of God.

The most intangible then becomes, in the promises of God and the evidence that He has presented, the most tangible in our lives.

Faith has always been the sign of God’s people, and hope has always been the transcending, guiding force of their lives. It is their firmest persuasion and their greatest expectation on which all optimism for the future is built. It is Holy obedience, knowing that there shall be a day when all shall come to an anticipated end and a true accounting must be given before the throne of the Almighty. In that day, though in former days it was not, faith and hope shall become more tangible than anything known or done or felt amidst this corporeal existence.

What then should our firmest foundations be built upon?

Though it then does not perhaps seem as real as the material or evidence of this life, there shall come a time when it all shall make sense. The questions that have mystified and baffled us in the most sincere of ways shall have the resounding answer of God as our eyes are opened and all that could not be seen shall play out in magnificent splendor before our very eyes. The veil of this world, which has blinded us to the greater spiritual understanding of life, shall be lifted from us and all evidence shall be made manifest before us.

Lord, grant this unto us all.

Now may the peace of the Lord, that transcending, encompassing peace that surpasses all human knowledge, wisdom, understanding and enlightenment amidst the evidence of all that is unseen, keep your hearts and minds, spirits and souls in Christ Jesus even unto life everlasting, Amen.