198 - Faith

Wording of this Handout:

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When I was young I was told, (by Christians who should have known better), that ?faith? was trusting in something you couldn?t see, hear, smell, touch or taste as proof or evidence. In other words, faith was something you exercised The illustration I was given was of a man on the roof of a tall building, who heard a voice say ?Jump!? and he jumped, trusting that he would be caught safely.

This idea of faith being ?blind trust? is nonsense! God never expects us to trust Him without some good, solid evidence to back Him up.

For example, we have faith in a chair because we see how strongly it is made. We trust a boat because we see that it is floating well. We trust lifts because they are solid and checked regularly. We trust airplanes because they almost never crash. We trust taxis, busses, cars, pens, pencils, televisions and taps. We trust all sorts of things in life because we have already had experience of their general reliability.

It is the same with God. We have the Bible, which tells us hundreds of stories about His reliability, and we have experience of His reliability if we have been a Christian for a few years. Our faith is based on something solid and dependable.

The Bible says ?By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear (reverence), prepared an ark to the saving of his house (family); by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith? Hebrews 11:7 (King James Version)