Have Faith in God

what is faith in God?

People tend to define faith in God according to their own understanding and belief,
for the Jewish people and most of other religions, to have faith in God means to honor Him trough doing exactly what the laws of God says, most of the time without understanding or loving what you are doing.

For us Christians, it is to believe in God, it is the kind of trust that you know can not wave, why? Because you know that God is faithful, He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. We know that His character can not be changed by any circumstances and we love Jesus Christ because He proved His love to us on the cross of Calvary.

In hebrews 11:1,"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

 why do we need to have faith in God?

I would like to give a very simple example here, let say two people walking on the same street toward the same direction or not, if you do not know the one walking alongside you, will walk in peace? if you do not trust the one walking near you will stay close to that person? The answers are definitely NO.

We want to have eternal life, and for that we need to walk with God, we need to let Him guide us, if we do not have faith in Him, if we do not know Him, if we do not trust that He knows the way and He will lead us to eternal life, then we can not enjoy eternal life. He is the one who promised it, so He knows the way and He is the only one to lead us to eternal life without a doubt.

Having faith in God is the pillar of our Christian life.


what is the result of having faith in God?

The result of having faith in God is seen in our daily life. You have to talk faith, you have to live faith, you have to act faith, that you may have an increase of faith. Exercising that living faith, you will grow to strong men and women in Christ Jesus.

Above all the result of faith in God is the absence of doubt in your Christian life, you will know that your God is faithful and so you do not need to worry or doubt, when you have a problem all you need to do is pray God and believe He will assist you, so your faith gives you peace of mind in all circumstances.


 how to keep faith in God?

It may seem that keeping your faith in God during hard time might be extremely difficult, but it not mush easy in the time of abundance either. What we need to remember is in Romans 10:17, that faith comes from hearing and hearing the word of God, in any circumstances of our life, we need to continue to hear the word of God.

The word of God serves two main purpose in our lives, one it is to help us understand God, know what is His love toward us, second it is to inspire us by example. Our faith is build upon the word of God, because we can refer to a certain circumstances of some one's life in the bible and see what God has done for him/her, and we know that He is ready to do the same for us.

Take King David in his moment of abundance, he sinned, he went and killed one of his soldier because he wanted his wife. Let us in all circumstances continue to hear the word of God to keep our faith in God growing.


 example of faith in God in the bible


Abraham, read in genesis from chapter 22, you will find that God asked of Abraham His servant one of the greatest sacrifice ever. Abraham waited for God's promise to be accomplish, the promise was about having a son. But because of the advanced age of his wife Abraham did not believe that God's promise was ever gonna come true, yet it did. And now God asked him to kill and sacrifice that same son who was his miracle. But Abraham because He now knew and had faith that God is faithful to His promises, was ready to give the son he got in sacrifice to God. 

God saw his heart and knew that Abraham was really ready to sacrifice his son and ordered him not to do it anymore. I like to think that this was God trying to make us understand what kind of pain He went trough when Christ gave himself in sacrifice or for that exact period because Christ was not yet on earth, the pain He was gonna endure when that would happen.


Hannah, let read in 1 Samuel from chapter 1 going on, she was a woman of faith. Married to her husband for several years, she could not give him a child. The husband took a second wife with whom he had children. The life of Hannah was full of mockery, humiliation and denigration from the society and from her co-wife. Hannah prayed to God every day and she promised that the first born God will bless her with, she will give consecrate his life to the service of God. And whee she received her blessing, she got a son named him Samuel and gave him to the prophet Eli to receive the teaching and serve the lord. And Samuel served the lord as a prophet until his death. 

What can we get as lessons from Hannah in the bible:
- She kept her faith during hard time
- She never replied badly to those who humiliated her because of her sterility
- She always had the support and love of her husband, I really like this point because when you  are having a hard time it is always great to have someone there to assist you, her husband never left her, if you read the whole story you will see he always had love and respect toward her. 
- She kept the promise she made to God, it is not always about God keeping His promises to us but also about us keeping our promises to God. At the beginning of the year we tend to take new resolution, about our health, job, school, finances, our spiritual life too, we would like to be better christian maybe by reading more the bible, by going to church without failure or eve being faithful with our tithe. But do we always accomplish what we promise?
Or when we are asking God to give us something and we promise, God if you give me XYZ, I will do ABC changes in my spiritual life, do keep those promises?
Hannah made one of the hardest promise ever and she kept it, she gave up her son at around the age of 3, only saw him once a year.


 Prophet Elijah, let read 1 kings 18, he lived in an era when the whole of Israel from the king to the people lost their way, they became idolaters of Baal. He was one of the few who remain faithful to God and served to bring back the people to God. He talked to the king and organized an event between the prophets of Baal and him the prophet of God, to establish who was the real God. The contest was about setting a altar on fire, the 400 prophets of Baal was to pray him to send fire and burn the altar and Elijah was to call upon God for the same. They took the whole day doing ceremonies, cutting their clothes and even their body for Baal to send fire but nothing happened, and Elijah made his prayer and fire came from heaven.

The greatest lesson we can get here is that no matter the circumstances around you, no matter what is believed to be good, no matter what everybody around you is doing, as long as it is against the word of God you should not participate or copy. Being the only one who is different because you are doing the will of God is the right thing to do. Everybody around Elijah was praying Baal, was idolaters but Elijah stayed faithful to God and succeeded to bring a whole nation back to God, us being different because of our God, will surely bring someone back to God.


Queen Ether, let read in the book of Esther chapter 1 going on, She was chosen as queen by king Ahasuerus. The story of Esther summary is that, the king rebuked his wife and called all the virgins of his kingdom to a party where he would choose a queen. At that time Israel was under the authority of the Medo-Persia kingdom, so everybody was to obey the king. So she came at that party and was chosen as the queen. The Jews were considered as a conquered nation and not every one liked to have them around, one of the king's adviser Haman, was preparing a decree to eliminate them all and in particular the queen's uncle Mordecai who would not bow before hm or the King.
He made the king sign a decree allowing people to kill and destroy the Jews anywhere in the kingdom because they where different and would not do according to the king. 

When Esther became a queen, her uncle Mordecai asked her not to show that she was a Jew and act according to laws. When Mordecai was informed of the decree against the Jews, he came to his niece to ask a favour, that Esther should talk to the king and have him revoke it. Esther did not refuse but she asked for the assistance of her people in praying and fasting to ask the favour of God because she was not allowed to go to the king unless called, she could be killed for it.

She went to king, she got his grace and was not killed, she invited him and Haman to a party and the king accepted. On that day of the party, she told the king that Haman wanted to kill her people and knowing that she was one of them, so he wanted to kill her. The king could not accept, he revoked the decree and killed Haman on the same place he was planning to kill Mordecai.

the great lesson here is that Esther never forget who she was, she stayed faithful to God even when she  had everything one can possibly need. Our faith is not only for receiving material things from God, it is above all for us to receive eternal life.


The woman with the issue of blood, let read in in Luke chapter8 from verse 43 going on, this woman never saw Christ before that day, she only heared of what he did by people sharing His work. She was not even among the people following Christ from place to place. But from what she heared, she had faith that Christ will heal her and she realize that everything coming in contact with Christ was blessed too. So just by touching the clothe of Christ she was healed. And Christ told her "thy faith as made thee whole"

Here are some lessons from the woman with the issue of blood:
- she had faith based upon what she heared about Christ
- she did not wait to meet Christ or to know everything about Him to believe 
- she did not go via someone else to reach Christ, build your own relationship with Him



faith and works

James2:26, "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." 
James 2:22, "Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? "
In all the example we saw above, the work or action the people realize perfected their faith.

We can not just say we believe and have faith in God and our action goes against it, you can not say you believe that God will bless you with food and go steal from a store, that is not having faith in God. But like Hannah you need tp pray and wait for the time God as set for you to receive His blessing.

   "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." We need to experience a resurrection on the subject of faith. Without faith (a faith that will rely upon a plain statement of the word) it is impossible to please God. A faith that is not sustained by works is worthless. Says the apostle, "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say, thou hast faith, and have not works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works." That faith if cherished in our hearts will necessarily draw after it the good works which justify and endorse the faith of the believer. Good works are indispensable as the fruit of faith, and are the sure evidence that we have passed from death unto life, because we love our believing brethren. This is not to say that our brethren are to step exactly in our footprints. True faith in God will lead us to understand that each is a worker. God works upon human minds, and all who love God will love their brethren. They will be zealous of good works.  {BTS, June 1, 1915 par. 2}  

When we have faith in God, we talk faith, we act faith and we live faith. In every aspect of our life we need to express our faith in God.

May God help us have faith, keep faith and live our faith in Him daily.

Thank you...