You Can Be Sure of It
Oct 24, 2019 | by Anthony Wade
What is faith? Have you ever sat down and analyzed your mental picture of faith? Have you examined not only what you think of faith, but more importantly, how you have grasped a hold of it in your spirit?
Most people seem to travel through life, never understanding what faith is. Maybe they are under the assumption that if they just think about their problem long enough, their faith can will it to go away. That is a mind-over-matter teaching that really has little, if anything, to do with faith. Maybe they think that their faith is defined by what they do for their local church. The fact is that faith is not the power of positive thinking, nor is it defined by what you do. Faith is way deeper, and yet much simpler than that.
These misconceptions about faith have been around for a long time. In fact, Webster’s 1913 Dictionary begins its first two definitions of faith with the words “the assent of the mind”. This notion, that I call mental assent, is the weakest form of faith that there is. In reality, it is a stretch to call it faith in the first place. Mental assent only gets its strength from the five senses: what you see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. Sense knowledge is fickle. The world will tell you things like “seeing is believing” and you will be tempted to chime in with “I’ll believe it when I see it”; but the truth of the matter is that you will need to have a more solid foundation for your belief system than what you see or hear to ever live an overcoming life for more than a few days. Why? Because that’s how often your circumstances change.
Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” So, we know that the Bible defines faith for us here, but what do those words, substance and evidence, mean? The beauty of true faith is hidden in plain sight, right there in the meaning of these two words. First of all, the word translated as substance, is the Greek word hypostasis. It means “a setting or placing under”, creating a picture of a substructure or foundation. From that meaning, hypostasis expands to sometimes mean the real or actual thing, as opposed to a shadow or type of a thing. Finally, this word comes to mean “a steadfastness of mind,” “confidence,” or “ASSURANCE.” Next, the Greek word translated as evidence is elegchos, and although evidence is a really nice translation of this word, another word we could use to help us further grasp the writer’s intent here is “PROOF.” Anyone knows that evidence in a courtroom is also known as proof.
So, if we put it all together, this is what that verse would look like: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence [or proof] of things not seen.”
You need to understand that faith is its own proof. Faith makes us absolutely, positively, without question, sure of the things that we hope for in life. When you hope for something, you would like it to be so. Faith comes in and says that it absolutely IS so, no matter how anything else looks! That assurance, in and of itself, is the very proof that those things are a reality in my life.
But where can we find those things of which we should be assured? You see, there has to be something that backs the things you are hoping for in life. There has to be a firm truth backing what belongs to you. Let’s say, for example, that you buy a car but need to wait a while before you take it home. If anyone doubts your ownership in the interim, you can show them the bill of sale or title to that car to prove that it is yours.
Now, in that example, a car title is a true representation of what belongs to you, but what is the ultimate truth in life? Well, in His own words, Jesus said He was truth (John 14:6) and He later went on to say that “(God’s) word is truth” (John 17:17). My friend, the Word of God is the ultimate source of truth. There is not another more comprehensive collection on Earth that details what TRULY belongs to you. Read your Heavenly Father’s Word today and take hold of what is yours. Decide to trust that His Word has the final say in your life’s destiny. That is true belief. That is real faith. You can be sure of it.
Today’s Word Study: Hebrews 11:1-6