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Faith…
“Now
faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen.” Hebrews 11:1
Many people think of faith merely in terms of a
certain feeling, or a strong religious opinion that people hold for a
period of time. True faith, by contrast, interacts with the prophetic
realm. Faith from eternity is dynamic, not static. We say it is “dynamic”
because it is connected to God’s unfolding plan or project of
salvation, so faith keeps in step with what God is doing at the moment.
Mere human feelings and opinions (the things that the world calls
“faith”) go nowhere and are temporary. Faith exists
independently of man’s history. History is simply the space between
God’s promises and their fulfillment.
"Am I only a God nearby,"
declares the LORD, "and not a God far away?” - Jeremiah 23:23
Many religious people today talk only about how God is
near. This is understandable; everyone feels better if preachers
reassure us that God is with us in our daily struggles, right next to us,
aware of everything that comes our way. Even so, the Bible also says God
is far away. God looks at the big picture, not just our
limited perspective. Even more importantly, God is not bound in the
temporal problems we face – He is already way ahead of us, fulfilling
the promises, completing His Work. True faith always connects to the
prophetic realm. Faith is not just reassuring ourselves that God is right
there by our side. It is also seeing that time itself is a feature of our
frail human existence, and that God is focused on the prophetic plan.
Prophecy is all-encompassing, going far beyond human
limits. It is not just a matter of predicting a few future events. It is
the fulfillment of phases in God’s Work. We can only understand
prophecy when we transcend our limited human experience though a genuine experience
of faith. Prophecy is much bigger than predicting an event that occurs
in one place at one time. It passes through generations, intersects the
past, present, and future, and cuts through nations, races, tribes,
languages, and peoples.
The element that expresses faith is things not seen.
It is evidence of what is not seen by human eyes, but instead by revelation
from the Holy Spirit. True faith comes only from the Holy Spirit; it is
not a human choice, a human feeling, or a human opinion.
Faith grows as we wait for the fulfillment of the prophecies.
In this way, the One who moves us along is the Holy Spirit, and the One
leading us is Jesus himself. We remember that Jesus said. “I am
the Way…” (John 14:6)
Faith is an unlimited project, operated by the Holy
Spirit as He convinces us of what cannot be seen. It is this convincing -
on several levels and in different ways – that is faith from
eternity. The greatest expression of this faith is in the assurance of
Jesus’ resurrection – not just as a message or a belief, but in
the personal experience that Jesus is alive.
The events that took place on the Day of Pentecost
confirmed that true faith – faith from eternity – had come to
into the hearts of the believers. It showed the phenomenon of the
resurrection, which would become the basis for all the doctrines of
Christianity. Jesus is alive, resurrected, and he was among the apostles
then – and will be with us every day until the end.
Living faith inserts us into a project that is already
going on – God’s eternal project. This eternal faith manifests
itself as alive in us moment by moment. This occurs as we continue to walk
within God’s greater plan or project. We do not mean walking in
God’s plan in a limited sense, focused on our own lives,
accomplishments, or existence. It is not merely an individual destiny. It
is a complete project of salvation: it began in eternity, came into this
world, and goes back into eternity, carrying us with it. This project goes
beyond time and leads us to live in it. This is how we walk in the Holy
Spirit, the way we walk on the secure path. Going from faith to faith
is the sequence of experiences we have as we proceed along in this eternal
project.
Again, we are speaking of something far greater than a
mere intellectual assent to the truth about who Jesus is. We mean
something more than what occurred when we first accepted Christ and
believed in him. We are talking about a series of experiences that are
evident in the Word of God.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
The “Word” in the original Greek text is
“logos,” the word for WISDOM and (therefore) also for the HOLY
SPIRIT. The Word became FLESH in the form of Jesus.
The same WORD operates today in the BODY, giving it
life, leading it within a project, so that it may walk toward eternity.
This is the fulfillment of true faith – a salvation, a life and
experience that transcends our physical, mortal existence.
Living faith is the Holy Spirit within us, the
guaranty or seal of eternity. It is a journey within a project that goes
far beyond our time and that makes us live in it, in the experience that we
live each moment with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit leads us from
“faith to faith,” from experience to experience, from victory
to victory.
Faith, therefore, comes from Jesus, or better yet, it is
Jesus – the life from eternity that he puts in us. This was the
faith that Paul discovered on the Road to Damascus – he saw the
light, heard the voice, and he found the Way. From then on, Paul had a
living faith.
Jesus is coming back to get what belongs to him
– his people. The faith that comes from him is located in his Body,
within the Faithful Church.
There is a crisis of faith, however, that emerges in
the world before the Rapture occurs. “When the Son of Man
comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8).
Man-made religions and philosophies often talk about faith as something
elusive, that they can never fully grasp. That is because the faith God
gives us comes only from HIM – not from ourselves – and we have
it only as we live our lives within God’s prophetic plan, his project
of salvation.
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