INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITION
In the previous chapter, “Prospects of the Born-Again and Spirit-Filled Life”, I chose to share some very personal and transparent experiences regarding my own involvement and spiritual journey. I wanted to be vulnerable enough to write down observations and insights that have been life-changing experiences for me, in a hope that our “I BELIEVE . . .” discussions would be personal, practical, and applicable to my friends and readers.
That hope extends not only to the areas of the Born-Again and Spirit-Filled Life, but also, to the subjects we will be exploring and investigating in the following segments. My desire is that the subjects will not be just seminarian, and classroom-theologically correct, but that they will be spot-on Biblically accurate, and especially, -- easily transferable to our everyday lives.
The first subject we will be dealing with in this practical collection, is the subject of “faith:”
How do the activities of the soul and spirit functions actually work out into becoming behavior?
We have all either heard sermons preached, or even secular references made, to traditional examples of “faith”: By faith, the shepherd boy, David, killed the giant Goliath with just a single stone and a home-made sling shot! By faith, the Leper’s deadly spots were cleansed and he was healed. The Centurion’s little daughter, who was off in another village, was healed as the Centurion turned around in faith and headed back home.
We have also been told that “without faith it is impossible to please God”, or “faith is the measure of your blessing.” What does all that mean? What is it? Who has it? Where does it originate? Do I already have it – or should I be praying for it? I even heard an old saint of the church say one time, “Well, God just didn’t give me any faith, so I’m really not responsible in that area.” What on earth does that mean?
The writer of the book of Hebrews gives us an interesting peek into the subject of faith. He describes it: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1 KJV) Perhaps some of our difficulty with the subject of faith stems from the same thinking pattern we had to work through in the earlier chapters of this book. There is a tendency to compartmentalize certain concepts. We think to ourselves; “There is flesh and that is different from spirit. There is good and that is in a different category from bad. There is religious and that is different from non-religious.” Then we conclude that since faith is talked about in the Bible and in church, it must be placed in the category of religious.
We also add to the confusion of the subject when we try to view faith too much as an entity, an “it” or a thing. It will begin to make a lot more sense if faith is viewed more as a “capacity.”
We will use as an operative DEFINITION of FAITH:
FAITH IS THE CAPACITY TO BELIEVE AND THEN ACT UPON THAT BELIEF
THE CAPACITY OF FAITH IS NEUTRAL
Faith is the neutral capacity with the ability to carry into action that which has become convincingly believed. Faith, then, is the capacity which moves a desire or willful intention from either, your soul function or your heart function into actual observable behavior.
Without this capacity you could make a volitional choice, but that choice would remain as a dead intention . . . never moving into behavior. Faith is a marvelous and very necessary phenomenon. You use it every day of your life.
Let’s investigate how the activities of the body, soul, and spirit move from intention into observable behavior.
SIMPLE EXAMPLES OF INTENTIONS BECOMING BEHAVIOR THROUGH THE CAPACITY OF FAITH
The Light Switch: If you are entering a darkened room and desire for the room to be filled with light, you simply walk over to the light switch and flip it to the “on” position. When you do so, you have just engaged the capacity of faith. You may not fully understand how the electric power traveled through the wires from the generated power source into the light bulb, but you are so convinced that when the switch is moved to the “on” position there will be light – and you step right over and activate the switch. You could have stood in the darkened doorway and desired and willed that the room become light, but unless that belief was acted upon, you would have stood in the dark until morning!
Your Chair Support: You were not at the factory when your chair was manufactured. You do not know the quality of materials that were used. You do not know, personally, the engineer who designed the chair. Yet, one thing you do know, your legs and feet are tired from standing and you want to sit down. You look at the chair and it is similar to other chairs upon which you have successfully set. You observe that other people are presently sitting on identical chairs as the one near you. Your feet and legs are even more tired than they were a few minutes ago. You believe that the chair will fulfill all the functional requirements of a chair – so you move around to the front of the chair, bend your knees and rest your entire weight upon the construction of the chair. You just utilized the phenomenon of faith; the capacity to believe and act upon that belief.
Your Car’s Ignition Key: There is no way in the world that you would go out in the public parking lot and take a silly looking metal object about two inches in length, with a round hole pierced in one end and funny scratchy, bumpy, teeth things running to the other end, and poke it into the dashboard or steering column of your car and commence to twist it in a clockwise rotation if you were not totally convinced that doing so was a necessary part of the standard procedure in getting your car started. But, when you believe that inserting the key in the ignition and turning it to the required position to engage the starter mechanism to start your car and that doing so will get you going down the road, you have absolutely no problem in doing so.
You may have moved through the procedure quite quickly and with little apparent thought regarding your actions, yet – you were utilizing this capacity called “faith.”
Your Alarm Clock: When you stop and think about it, there really is quite a bit of confidence demonstrated every time you set that alarm clock and totally pass out for the night, counting on that crazy instrument to wake you up in time so that you can get to work. And even though the consequences of a malfunction would be extremely costly, and even though there is no real guarantee that your alarm clock will always work correctly, you believed it will function properly at least one more morning. Therefore, you set it and don’t think another thing about it until it rings or buzzes the next morning.
Your capacity of faith enabled you to believe and act – and in this case rest upon your belief that your alarm clock would perform in a trustworthy manner. That’s real faith!
Other Examples: When you start thinking about it you become overwhelmed at how many times each day you utilize this capacity called “faith” in your everyday involvements. Watching the gas gauge on your car –or even more than that, acting on the confidence in the gas pump you use to measure out the proper gallons for which you pay; or driving through the traffic signals confident that the drivers coming the other way will observe their signals, and counting on the fact that the signals are working correctly.
I even marvel at the ease and confidence displayed when flying on a super-jumbo jet aircraft. Everybody knows that there is no possible way to get that much metal and people and cargo off the ground and flying thousands of miles in a designated direction. Yet, I am convinced enough that it will make the trip successfully that I step right up and with a smile on my face, and pay the required money for the ticket.
Considering how many times we activate our “faith”, in our everyday activities, it is no wonder that the writer of the book of Hebrews declared that, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Heb. 11:6 NIV)
The more you think about it, the more you could almost paraphrase it and say that without using this capacity of faith, which enables you to believe and then act upon that belief, it would really be impossible for you to do anything in this life.
HOW DO YOU RECEIVE THIS CAPACITY CALLED FAITH?
As long as you live and breathe you can never quit exercising the capacity of faith. It is a very normal activity of your everyday life. Seeking after the capacity of faith, however, would be like asking for a mouth with which to eat or asking for lungs with which to breathe. You already possess a mouth. You are already equipped with lungs. Likewise, you already have faith.
Faith is a marvelous gift, given to every person by a loving God. You were born with this capacity. In the normal functions of life, the process of this living faith is so unalterably a part of your life that it sometimes goes unnoticed. Faith is so continual that it is tough sometimes to even dream of calling it “Faith” – but it is!
The writer to the Hebrews was talking about that when he stated that faith, quite simply, is;
. . . the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead. (Heb.11:1 TLB)
He is saying here that you become so convinced that something is going to be, that you begin behaving as if it had already come to past. Your behavior is actually being altered through the process of anticipation.
It is far more than just mental assent. It goes beyond just wishing that something would happen. There is an element of action which takes place in altering your behavior that is based on a high level of confidence. Faith is not just “good intentions.” Good intentions which do not include the objective risk of behavioral alteration simply die as good intentions. That is not faith.
In the book of James, we are presented with an interesting discussion on this very issue:
Are there still some among you who hold that “only believing” is enough? Believing in one God? Well, remember that the demons believe this too – so strongly that they tremble in terror! Fool! When will you ever learn that “believing” is useless without doing what God wants you to? Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith.
Don’t you remember that even our Father Abraham was declared good because of what he did when he was willing to obey God even if it meant offering his son Isaac to die on the altar? You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to; his faith was made complete by what he did, by his actions, his good deeds. (James 2:19-22 TLB)
James is saying here that it is possible to use the function of your intellect and become convinced of the merits of something but that is not faith. It never moves from the soul function or the heart function into actual behavior.
Faith, then, becomes the bridge over which intentions travel to become behavior. Faith is the capacity to believe and then to act upon that belief, thereby, allowing a desire or intention to move effectively across that bridge into the world of observable reality.
