40 Days - Day 35

Many times throughout the Bible, we as Christians are told to have faith: “be faithful in Christ,” “faith, hope and love,” faith, faith, faith. Quite frankly, I’m sick of faith. Faith does nothing for us. In fact, I’d bet my salvation that God doesn’t want us to have faith. Now before you say anything to that and dismiss what I have to say as the delusional writings of a madman, ask yourself what faith is.

Seriously. Do it.

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I can wait.

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Now that you have done that, I would be willing to bet that you said something that I have heard many times before; or maybe meant to say but couldn’t verbalize it. I know I couldn’t. Did you tell yourself, or lead yourself to think that faith is a wish? That faith is merely a whim of hope, a psychological reassurance or desire that something could come, and by having faith, you are merely taking an optimistic stance?

If you know me at all, you know that I love to debate people, especially in the category of religious thought. Just recently, I was in a debate with a pair of Mormons, and I was doing very well compared to other encounters. I would ask a question, and after giving my problems with their religion a thought, they would always respond with: “Well…we just have to have faith.”

I received that exact answer a good four or five times before I asked them the same, mind-boggling question that I posed for you. I said, “You have mentioned several times that you need faith, but how do you define faith?” I gave him a few minutes to stand in dumbstruck silence before I answered for him.

What is faith? The world has told us to believe that faith IS a whim, a hope for something that could not conceivably become. The Bible teaches otherwise. Here is an example of what I’m saying. Though not all of you are 18, let’s assume that you are going to buy a lottery ticket with a friend. You can walk into the store and tell your friend that you have faith that you will win. What kind of faith is that?!? That is the worldly definition of faith, a sheer hope that you will win with that lottery ticket. That is simply a hope grounded in no evidence or reason for thinking so. The world has taught us that is what having faith means. As Christians, we shouldn’t buy into that garbage.

Now we will recreate that same scene with one minor change. You now have x-ray vision. If you go up to the counter and see through the ticket before you buy it, how would you describe saying that you have faith that you will win? I would say that it’s pretty certain that you would have Biblical faith in your winnings. What does that mean?

Since you have seen through your card to determine that you do indeed have a winner, you can tell your friend that you do not have faith that you will win, but instead you have an active trust that you will win based on your power of observation. That is the kind of faith that God desires of us - ACTIVE TRUST. We cannot simply walk around proclaiming ourselves to be Christians, saying that we have faith that Jesus rose from the dead. Instead, the world will misinterpret that meaning of faith, and Christianity will be dismissed as “just another whim.” So if, instead of faith, we go around practicing active trust, we will begin to realize what it is that makes genuine Christian faith different from that of everyday faith.

I was once told by my dad, “God can move mountains, but you had better bring a shovel.” What does this quote mean to us? I think it means exactly what I am trying to say regarding the nature of faith. We can have faith that God will move the mountain for us, but we must be willing to work for Him and do His will. If we do not have that active trust that He will do it, then our faith is as useless as wishful thinking, and we will end up trying to move that mountain under our own earthly power, which won’t be happening anytime soon.

Andrew Hayslip