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!