Exploring Faith

What is faith? We’ll say more about that later. Right now, it is important for you to know that everyone lives by faith. When you get in your car to drive to work, for instance, you believe you’ll get there safely. That’s faith. You assume you’ll be paid at the end of the week. That’s faith, too. You are confident that when you arrive home after work your home will actually be there. It might not be. It could have burned to the ground.

When you stop to think about it, faith has a profound influence on our lives and behavior. We put money in our bank accounts and expect it to be there when we want to withdraw it. We expect other cars to stop at red lights when we’re passing through the intersection on green lights.

Actually, faith impacts the most important decisions we make in life, including where we will spend eternity. So let’s begin with a definition of faith. The Bible tells us, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

This doesn’t mean that we have to make a blind leap of faith and hope it will somehow get us to heaven. A healthy faith is based on evidence. For instance, is there any indication or proof that what is being said is true?

The Bible says, for instance, that everyone has sinned. This means that we prefer to do things our way rather than God’s. We like to be in charge. We want to be in control. Does this ring true?

We’re also told in Scripture that the wages of sin is death. We certainly see evidence of that all around us. Sooner or later, we all die. What we often miss is that death extends beyond our physical lives, leaving us spiritually dead and, in the end, we may find ourselves eternally separated from God, too. This is called eternal death.

 But check this out. The Bible tells us Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God who came and died to pay the penalty for our sins and physically rose from the grave three days after He was crucified. Is there clear evidence that He was the Son of God? Yes. Is there convincing evidence that He was physically raised from the grave? Absolutely.

We believe you’ll be surprised by what you find, and it may be your first step in a life-changing journey of faith in which you come to know God in a way you’ve never imagined