By Pastor Anthony L. Scott
“God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:9, NASB)
The life of a Christian is a life of faith: coming to faith, keeping the faith, and of finishing the faith. Geerhardus Vos, said that, “faith is the great spiritualizing principle, for faith is the state of mind that keeps us in touch with the higher world.”
The word faith resonates with our deepest and innermost desires. This is because life can be uncertain and painful. So since life can be so unpredictable, we look to place our trust in people, institutions, and ideas both to believe in and place our hope. We have an innate desire to find security for things which we cannot control ourselves.
In What Christians ought to Believe, author Michael F. Bird, says, “faith, belief, trust, hope—-whatever words you like—these emerge from a deeply human experience of dualities; experiences of life and loss, fidelity and failure, joy and grief, as well as trust and betrayal. We look to something or someone to be a rock and anchor that we can cling to in a world that feels like a merry-go-round spinning out of control.” The reality is that faith is an inalienable feature of human existence.
While we as human have many needs and desires. Our most basic need is hardwired into our humanity and that is the need to know God. To Know God is to know that God Is Faithful. This means that our faith is oriented toward the God who has shown He Himself is faithful to His people. When our faith fails, God remains faithful to us.
Practically speaking, faith helps us to realize that God doesn’t react to situations in our lives, He’s already there. So with this knowledge, we also come to know that we don’t first get the answers then live in light of our understanding, but in light of living we try to understand.
Faith is also coupled with trust. It is our trusting response to what God has done for us and promised us in the gospel. It exists not on what we can prove to be so but on the fact that God declared it so. According to Karl Barth, “Faith is trust in divine faithfulness.”
In one small town, there was a well known repairman who specialized in restoring broken appliances. He was so well known in fact that people would come from miles around. One particular day a young boy came to him with a broken toaster to repair. The thing that amazed the repairman was not simply because the young boy brought his toaster under one arm but he also had a loaf of bread under the other!
God is faithful to perform what He has promised in His Word!
