“I WISH I HAD FAITH to pray for a house with the space we need, in the right location.” “I wish I had faith to pray for an apartment at a rent we could afford.” “I wish I had the faith to pray literally for food—it’s becoming a real problem these days.” “I wish I had the faith to pray that our garden crop would grow.” “I wish I had faith to believe God could intervene in history in answer to prayer.” “I wish I had faith to take God’s promises about prayer literally in just some area of my life.” “I wish God’s existence and presence were real to me. I guess I just don’t have the right kind of faith, because when I pray it seems like a recitation of words.” “I wish I had faith to pray for the needs of my children with expectancy.” “I wish I had faith to pray for our church, or other people I know, with certainty that there would be some results.” “I wish I had faith to pray for the Lord’s return with the excitement of real hope.”
Is there some magic formula to be discovered for manufacturing “faith”? Is there a key to unlock a supply cupboard containing the “faith” some people seem to have discovered? Is there a mysterious level that only the properly initiated can reach, where “faith” is then freely given?
By whose definition has the word “faith” come to have a mystical twist, suggesting a hushed atmosphere with sights, sounds, and feelings enveloping the fortunate ones and driving out ordinary thought forms and logical understanding? Who has spread the idea that faith is separated from reason and mind, that it is to be “experienced” even as people “experience” a light show with rock music, or is to be like a state of “spiritual” floating, achieved perhaps by swallowing or smoking some chemical or plant substance? What definition opens the way to “faith” for an elite who have had some sort of an Experience that others must duplicate or else be left in the cold? Is there a beginning place for exercising “faith,” as one exercises one’s muscles, when one is a Christian?
God speaks to us clearly concerning the base for faith and the primary exercise for our faith: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). “Hearing” has to do with physical ears, first of all, but also with the mind. “Hearing” is accompanied by some sort of action in our minds if words in a language we understand are being used. Ears and mind are simultaneously involved. And we cannot think of what we hear as being some vague music that flows through us without touching a thought process: God speaks here of verbalized “sound,” the word of God, truth being unfolded by the use of a succession of meaningful words in human language.
The “word of God” is the Bible. What makes it different is, not that it involves some mystical kind of feeling that bypasses language, but that it is what God has revealed to man, and is therefore Truth. Language can be used to say things that are not true, to deceive, to stir up responses that are wrong, to twist people’s thinking. But in God’s Word, a trustworthy, perfectly just and holy person is verbalizing something that can be depended upon completely. We should be shaken with the realization that we are not reading something another human being has said so that we have a “right” to our “opinion”; we are to accept what is being said as true.
We are to listen to God’s definition of “faith” with careful expectation of discovering what we have overlooked before, of really learning something that is true, and that is to be learned with the equipment God has given us, just as we learn arithmetic and spelling or how to bake a cake, plant a garden, or build a house that will stand the storms. Understanding does not come immediately in the learning process in most areas of life; it usually takes some time. The first requirement of understanding is hearing, listening, paying attention to the content of what is being said.
God tells us in Hebrews 11:3, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” What a staggering statement of fact, as well as a definition of what we are to start with in our exercise of faith. We are thrust back to the beginning of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and we are told to believe that the living God spoke the truth when he said he created the heavens and the earth. We are told to demonstrate or exercise our faith before God himself, and any others who know about it, by believing that God spoke the truth when he said that he created all things. We are to read with eagerness the Genesis account, thrilling at the opportunity to have faith, to start at the starting place God has given, and to state in the most emphatic way we can in our own way—playing an accompaniment on the piano, or flute, or violin, using poetry or painting, prose spoken or written—“I have faith to believe you, God, Creator, to believe that you have made what I see, taste, smell, and hear. I believe what you have verbalized in your word. I believe in your creation of the universe. Thank you.”
In Second Peter 3:2–4 we are warned of scoffers who will be scornful about the literalness or truth of the promises of the coming of Jesus the second time. They will say that nothing has ever changed in history, that things simply continue as they always have. In verse 5 a sharp finger is pointed at us in warning for this moment of twentieth-century temptation to Christians: “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.” Here is the negative of the faith set forth in Hebrews 11. Here is a willful putting aside of the beginning point, and a demonstration that then the “ending point” is also gone. Can we have faith for the present moment of literally trusting the promises connected with prayer? Can we have assurance and expectancy and literal hope of the second coming and “willfully forget” or turn away from, push aside, ignore, the command to dwell on creation? As the psalmist speaks in Psalm 33 of praising God and singing unto him, his song is based on believing, his faith that “by the word of the Lord were the heavens made.… For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.”
It is the God of Creation in whom we are to have faith. It is his spoken word we are to believe when he tells us he created. As we come with our requests “with thanksgiving” and thank God for what he has done in the past, we are to include in our thanksgiving creation. “Let them praise the name of the Lord: for he commanded, and they were created.”
‘Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.” Let us cast ourselves on our faces and cry out for a reality of that faith to be such as will be pleasing to God. He has given us the starting place, clearly. It is his definition of faith.
