Tag Archives: faith

Heaven Pt. 152: Inciting God

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Therefore the LORD heard this, and was wroth: so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel;

Because they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation:

Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, Psm. 78:21-23 KJV

sodom

If faith is the currency of Heaven, then unbelief is the coinage of Hell.

If faith stirs pleasure within God’s bosom, then unbelief fills His heart with great sorrow.

Psalm 78 indicates His wrath is particularly stirred against nations who have seen God in action or who have a history with God’s miracles and yet refuse faith in their generation for one reason or another.

God has given us great revelation of Himself in our generation. The proliferation of the gospel today is greater than it has ever been in world history. Miracles and testimonies of  miracles abound. Yet still the mindset that was in the ancient  Israelites  tempts us.

Paul the apostle wrote this to the Corinthian Church:

I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. 2 In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses. 3 All of them ate the same spiritual food,4 and all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

6 These things happened as a warning to us, so that we would not crave evil things as they did, 7 or worship idols as some of them did. As the Scriptures say, “The people celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged in pagan revelry.” 8 And we must not engage in sexual immorality as some of them did, causing 23,000 of them to die in one day.

9 Nor should we put Christ to the test, as some of them did and then died from snakebites. 10 And don’t grumble as some of them did, and then were destroyed by the angel of death. 11 These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age.

12 If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.  1 Cor. 10:1-12

We stand at a precipice of choice. We know what God has  said. We have heard what God has done and is doing. Our choice is to approach His word and the testimony we have heard with an attitude of faith or an attitude of unbelief. On the one hand we have an example of what happened to those who approached the choice in unbelief. On the other we have the example of the 120 who followed Jesus after His ascension.

On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place.2 Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. 3 Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. 4 And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability…. All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.

43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. Act 2:1-4, 43-47

I choose the latter and reject the former. How about you?

Pastor Wrinkles: Faith & Hope Pt. 2

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles
Big Rock

Jesus is the sure foundation.

In part 1 of this mini-series we talked about faith. If you missed that session you can find it here:

https://josephelonlillie.com/2013/11/22/pastor-wrinkles-faith-hope-pt-1/

I closed Faith & Hope Pt. 1 by saying ” If it is true that every man has faith living inside of him (like everyone has love living inside of him), then it is impossible to be truly faithless. Being unable to use our faith is not really a faith problem, then. It is a hope problem.”

So in this post it falls to me  to define for us the word “hope”, because fixing a problem (if we have one) always begins with defining what it is. Don’t you agree?

In part one I stated that faith (the Greek word pistis) is always used as a noun. Unlike faith, hope can be used as both a noun and a verb. We can hope for things to happen (verb form)…. OR….We can have a hope (noun form).

The verb form of hope is found in verses like Romans 8:25 “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” 

Here the verb, hope, is the word “elpizo”  which means “to trust in”. When we put our faith in someone or something then we are hoping in it. Hold on!I am about to turn the lights on for someone.

We now know about the verb form of hope, but what about the noun form of hope? What is A HOPE?

The Greek noun translated as hope in the New Testament is the word “Elpis”-  the object one applies faith to.

But the definitions of hope that really help here are from the Hebrew. There are several words translated as hope in the Old Testament but the two that I find most helpful are the words “tiqvah”  and “betach”

a tiqvah is a cord and my betach is my security or my protection. Picture yourself repelling from a high cliff with nothing between you and a three hundred foot drop but the rope tied around your waist. The rope is your hope. It is your cord (tiqvah) and your security or protection (betach).

Now here is where the issue with faith comes in. You see, I can have all kinds of faith living inside of me but if I am expected to repel down a three hundred foot cliff using a seventy five year old rope that is full of dry rot I am going to have a very hard time using my faith to actually get myself to go over the edge. My problem is not with the level of my faith it is with the trustworthiness of the thing I am being asked to trust (my hope).

Now let’s put that into relationship terms. Many of us put our faith in people who were too weak to hold us up. We got dropped and smashed on the rocks of life. We  made vows we would never trust anyone again. We don’t have a faith problem. We still have all kinds of faith living inside of us. We just don’t think there is anyone out there we can put our faith in. We see no hope…no tiqvah…no betach we can attach our faith to.

This is what Paul was talking about when he wrote, “11 Don’t forget that you Gentiles used to be outsiders. … In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope.” Ephesians 2:11,12 NLT

We cannot truly walk by faith until we meet someone who is strong enough to keep us from smashing on the rocks beneath the cliff called life. Jesus Christ is the only true hope of the world and until we make him our hope we succeed at nothing other than causing more injury to our faith.

Pastor Wrinkles: Faith & Hope Pt. 1

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One of my readers recently used a quote in her blog that sparked a conversation  regarding the difference between faith and  hope. At a suggestion from her I thought I might create a few posts detailing the ideas of faith and hope as they are laid out in the Bible.

Let’s start with  faith. The word faith is translated 247 times in 231 verses of Scripture. It goes without saying, that amount of mentions makes faith a major topic in the Bible.The Greek word usually translated as “faith is  “Pistis”,  a noun defined as  “a conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the New Testament it refers to a conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervour born of faith and joined with it.” (Strong’s g 4102)

My friend Dawn calls faith an intangible, and that it is! The Bible calls it a substance, and it is that as well (Heb. 11:1). Like love, faith cannot be touched or examined with the natural senses( sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste). It is perceived with the soul (the mind, the will and the emotions) and is acted upon by the spirit (the part of us that connects with the spirit world).

The apostle Peter tells us that faith is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7) but he also alludes to the fact that faith, in all of us, is mixed with many other unseemly things and so needs to be to be “tried by fire”. I think this truth answers the question many of us have about why God allows certain things to happen to us. If God values faith more highly than anything else in the world but we value anything else in the world more highly than faith, wouldn’t it make sense that God would work to take away that thing   so we can come to value what He sees as truly valuable?

Preachers have declared that faith is the currency of Heaven.  In the gospels Jesus states more than a dozen times that it is faith that buys the power of Heaven into the world for healing, miracles and the greatest supernatural work of God(forgiveness of sins).

I could go on much further concerning faith but in the interest of word count I will close with this. Paul the apostle taught that every human has faith inside of them when he wrote, “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.” (Romans 12:3 NKJV)  This is our segue into the next post on hope. If it is true that every man has faith living inside of him (like everyone has love living inside of him), then it is impossible to be truly faithless. Being unable to use our faith is not really a faith problem, then. It is a hope problem.

Don’t miss Faith & Hope Pt. 2!