Four Things we Forget about Faith

In this thought-provoking episode of the In and For Podcast, we delve into the true meaning of faith. We explore common misconceptions and clarify what faith is (( and isn't) according to the Bible. Through engaging discussions and relatable analogies, we reveal how faith is not blind or opposed to reason, but rather a deep trust in God's promises. Join us as we unpack four key aspects of faith that are often overlooked, offering listeners a clearer understanding of how to live a faith-filled life in today's complex world.

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Faith: A Cultural Confusion
• 3:04 Defining Faith: Trust in Action
• 5:30 Faith vs. Manifesting: A Cultural Contrast
• 8:35 Faith and Reason: Allies, Not Enemies
• 14:23 The Nature of Faith: Not Blind, But Confident
• 17:26 The Action of Faith: Demonstrating Trust
• 20:08 Practical Takeaways: Living Out Faith
• 22:45 Conclusion: Anchoring Faith in God's Character

Transcript

0:00

Have you ever wondered if faith is just believing in something without proof? Or if Christians are supposed to have blind faith, like turning off your brain and hoping for the best? So what is faith? And why does it matter so much in a culture that is confused and constantly redefining truth? Well, that is the discussion for today. Welcome back to the In and For podcast, where we help you live in Christ and for culture, cutting through the confusion so you can see Jesus clearly. I'm Shelley Komoszewski. I'm Brock Anderson and Shelley and I represent a ministry called Sightline where we're on mission to cut through cultural confusion so people see Jesus. Clearly this podcast is one of the ways that we fulfill that mission. We have many other resources available on sightlineministry.org so be sure to check that out. Thank you. I try to have smooth plugins. Today we are talking about one of the most misunderstood words in Christianity. Talking about faith. Everyone uses the word. Everyone assumes they know what it means. You talk to four different people. You're likely to get four different descriptions of what faith is. But the Bible has a very specific meaning and very few people describe faith the way the Bible does. If you're familiar with a with a phenomenal movie called The Princess Bride. There's a very memorable character there named Inigo Montoya and he says several memorable lines in that movie. But one line, that's one of the lines, but one of the other lines he says is very, I think, aligns with what I think the Bible is saying back to a lot of people when it comes to faith is you keep using that word and I'm not sure, I don't think it means what you think it means. Ooh. I think that's what the Bible has to say to a lot of us. Is that we're just getting what faith is wrong according to what scripture says. Hmm. I think some people think faith is just a feeling. Maybe others think it's optimism or ignoring reality. Some think it's a leap into the unknown. And right now, I think culture is offering us all kinds of different spiritual substitutes. So before we talk about what faith is not, let's talk about what faith actually is. Yeah, so when the Bible talks about the word faith or belief, it uses two words predominantly. And so the Greeks, so put on your fancy uh theologian glasses in the Greek. So the verb form is pisteo and the noun form is tisthus, but they both carry the same meaning. And it's the word trust. And it's simply trust. And to the chagrin of many. em who desire faith to be this very mystical and mysterious thing. Sometimes the Bible describes things when we think about the Trinity or we think about Jesus being both God and man and the hypostatic union or We think about things like the transfiguration when Jesus appears with Moses and Elijah and it's big and it's mysterious and it's marvelous and then there's other things that the Bible describes in very simple terms and very easy to understand terms and faith is one of those things. So faith is not uh a mysterious energy or a mysterious force that we tap into. Faith simply means trust. Hmm. we talk about it in the scripture. And more importantly, it's trust in something or someone. That's so good. So we've all heard the famous thing about when I sit in the chair, I'm trusting that the chair will hold me. Or when I step onto a plane, I'm trusting that the pilot and the mechanics of the plane will get me where I need to go. So the question really isn't, do I have faith? Everyone has faith. The real question is, in what or whom am I putting that faith or trust in? Yeah, and this is the piece that we don't really talk about enough, is that faith is not a thing out there on itself. Faith is what you use to place your trust in something or in someone. Faith always requires an object. And this is why it's so important to understand that the word faith means the word trust, because here in our culture, when we say, I have faith. We've been trained by our culture to be like, oh, that's an okay statement. You have faith. But if I say, I have trust, you actually want to lean in and be like, trust in what? What is it that you have trust in? But because faith means trust, it's actually better when you hear that word, faith, to switch it out with the word trust so that we avoid saying things like, well, I have faith. Because what you're really seeing is I have trust. And when someone else says, I have faith. we should lean in and be like, have faith in what? You have faith in whom? Because faith requires an object. That's so, so good. Reminds me of a Minnesota frozen lake story. That's, ooh, nothing? Okay. yes, I can't wait to hear it. I want to hear more about this Minnesota frozen lake story. So every year in Minnesota when the lakes freeze, everybody waits with bated breath for the ice to be thick enough that we can go out on it. And so there's all kinds of news reports and all of it. so when those days when it's finally deemed ice appropriate, Everybody heads out to the ice and brave kids run straight across it like they're on a frozen racetrack. Total confidence, zero hesitation. And then there's the rest of us who inch out, testing each step, listening for cracks, maybe bargaining with God, Lord, please don't let me fall through this ice. Don't let me fall through. But here's where you learn pretty quickly. Your confidence doesn't determine whether the ice will hold. The thickness of the ice does. Thick ice supports nervous people. and thin ice breaks beneath confident people. I think that's a really interesting way to look at faith. Yeah, me too. And so Josh McDowell used to say this a lot, that faith is only as strong or is only as good as the object that it's placed in, which is again why it's so important to replace faith with the word trust, to get that full understanding of what you're actually doing. You're trusting in something or someone because regardless of how much confidence you have in thin ice, it's going to break when you step on it. And no matter how little confidence or trust you have, And thick ice, it's going to hold you up when you step on it because it's the object that matters. So it's not the size of your faith that matters. What matters is the object in which you're placing your faith. Is it worthy of your trust? And that's really important to understand when it comes to faith or trust. I think that's so good, Brock, and I think it's really important because our culture confuses faith with something else entirely. Maybe we've heard the rumblings of this the past few years, manifesting. What does that mean, Brock? Yeah, so you never quite know what to think of manifesting when you hear it because a lot of times people just use it as a joke. younger generations especially will say, oh, I'm manifesting my team winning this game or I'm manifesting a good grade on this test or in this class. But it actually has a very serious meaning that people assign to it. And that is I actually have the ability to think good things. into the universe and if I think these good things and then declare them from the universe I then will manifest them into my life. So I want to have those good vibes and those good thoughts and if I do that then I'm bringing those good things into my life and it's actually going to happen. And the thing about that is that that sometimes gets equated to faith. Like that's the kind of faith that I have. Well if you're thinking about faith as the word trust which is the biblical definition of the word faith then what am I actually trusting? You're actually not trusting the universe in that case. You're trusting yourself. You're the one that's self-powered when it comes to manifesting this from the universe. You're the one that's driving this. It's self-driven and it's also self-centered. It's all self-focused. And so this manifesting thing uh really ends up becoming faith in myself, trust in myself. And so instead of playing faith, this thing that I place into another object and it's trustworthyness, I say, oh, I just put this circular trust in my, in myself. And so that's what ends up manifesting ends up not working because you actually end up not putting your, your faith or trust in anything. Right, and biblical faith is the opposite of that. Manifesting tries to control outcomes where faith surrenders outcomes to God who's infinitely wiser and infinitely better. Manifesting says, can speak my desires into existence. Faith says, God knows better than I do and I trust his will above mine. One leads to exhaustion and disappointment and one leads to a peace. putting trust in the God who loves us and created us for relationship. Yeah, and I think that leads perfectly into what we want to talk about today. We want to we want to look at what faith is and what faith is not. We're going look at two examples of what faith is not and we look at two examples of what faith is in this overarching lens of four things that we often forget about faith that we need to remember, because we've got to get this right, because having biblical faith really matters. And so we need to get it right about what faith is. And so the first thing we want to talk about what faith is not is faith is not the opposite of reason. We hear this a lot the opposite of the opposite of faith is is reason or evidence well the opposite of faith is unbelief. So that's that that's we need to understand first and foremost. uh So the opposite of faith can't be reason because faith already has an opposite and that's unbelief and we see reason described throughout scripture as a good thing. know Isaiah 118 says come and let us reason together. And Paul is talking to the Athenians in Acts 17. It says he reasons with them. And because Paul wrote so much of the New Testament, we actually see how he reasons, how he asks all these questions. In the book of Romans alone, he asked more than 50 questions. And he's preempting a lot of his arguments to these questions because he knows the kinds of things that people are going to ask in response to what he's saying. And so he's reasoning with them with evidences, with reason. We see Peter tell us in 1 Peter 3.15 to always be ready to provide reasons for why we believe what we believe uh when people ask. Jesus performed miracles as reasons to believe that he is who he says he is. He didn't just perform miracles to put on showmanship. He's saying, I actually have the authority to forgive sins because I am God. How do you know I'm God? Well, only God can stop the winds and the waves. Only God can resurrect people from from the dead after four days, as he did with Lazarus. Only God can summon Elijah and Moses at his side, at his command. And so, but he doesn't just do this as this powerful person. He provides reasons and evidence for why people should believe he is God, that he is who he says he is. Prophecy after prophecy in the Old Testament are reasons and evidences of here is this Messiah that's to come. And Jesus fulfills that. perfectly. There are reasons why we can believe in the Messiah. And so we see Christianity built upon evidence after evidence. John in his gospel in chapter 21 verse 25 actually says Jesus provides so many evidences that so many reasons to believe that he is that they could fill up the entire world. So we don't see the opposite of reasons when we come to the Bible. We see a faith that's built upon evidence that's built upon reason. And I want to, I want to just talk about a story uh real fast. And this just came to my mind. uh allow me to improv. uh My wife and I, we ministered to Mormons for several years. They're in our neighborhood a lot. And they would come by and we would have long discussions with them. And I remember one time in particular, We were talking to Mormons about the Book of Mormon and they were coming from a place to where faith is the complete opposite of reason. And you read the Book of Mormon and this is how Mormons believe uh that you become a Mormon. You read the Book of Mormon and you get a warm feeling in your chest and that warm feeling is evidence that you are being convinced of the truth of the Book of Mormon and then you should then follow them on and go to temple with them. uh But what I had pushed back on them is that is that actually the Bible gives us all sorts of reasons to believe that God is who he says he is in fact When I shut my Bible I can still see who God is because he actually created the entire universe and and so all the things that we see in the world Actually point to a God who created all these things and they tell us some things about who God is But when I closed the book of Mormon God disappears. And then they'd ask me like, well, what do you mean? Like, well, for example, the Bible has 25,000 archaeological evidences that support the claims that it makes about history and about places. And the Book of Mormon talks about different people groups like the Nephites, the Lamanites, and the Jaredites, and that they were people that rode on elephants and that they were steel making cultures. But here's the problem. According to anthropology, there was no such people group. as Nephites, Lamanites, or Jaredites. There were no elephants in the region where they said they were. There is no evidence of steel in the areas where they said they were. And so there's no reason to believe that those claims are actually true. And we went on and on and looked at different things throughout, not just the Book of Mormon, but the Lost Book of Abraham actually being an Egyptian burial document and different things showing that there's not reason to believe this is true. because faith isn't just this thing that's the opposite of reason and requires no evidence. Actually, biblical faith is built upon reason after reason after reason to believe we have what's called a reasonable faith. And I think that's really important to keep in That is good. Faith and reason are not enemies. You said before they're teammates. I love that. Yes. That's the right way to think about faith and reason. uh All right, so the first one, faith is not the opposite of reason. Second one, faith is not blind. think people love quoting, walk by faith and not by sight, as if it means ignore reality and do something reckless. But Paul isn't giving us a prescription, he's giving us a description. I think he's saying that right now, because we're not physically face to face in the presence of Jesus, we trust who he is without seeing him fully. And because we're living in between the two worlds, the now and the not yet. Faith isn't blindness. Faith is full confidence in the Christ that we know and one day we'll see fully. Yeah, and that's a really important point to think about when it comes to that scripture that we do not walk by sight, we walk by faith, to look at the fullness of the context that's in that scripture to see what Paul is actually saying. That's 2 Corinthians 5, 7. When we look at the context, we see it exactly as you just said. It's actually telling us how we're living every single day. We're living by faith because we don't actually see Christ but we're living by faith in Him. And this is actually fleshed out a little bit more in the book of 1st Peter where it says, do not see Christ that you believe in Him, not seeing Him still, yet you hold to Him. And that's what Paul is talking about. It's a day-to-day believing that what Jesus has done, what Jesus has proclaimed, and all the evidences we see in Scripture are worthwhile of trusting in. whereas that often gets taken out of context of I don't need reasons, I don't need evidence, I'm just going to blindly believe even though I have every reason not to. So that's important to keep in mind. uh One of the things that faith is, number three, talk about one of the things that faith is. Faith is rooted in God's promises and I think when we think of oh God's One of God's major promises in scripture is the promise to Abraham that he would be the father of nations. And how that comes about, I just think, is a phenomenal story that we just can't... Father Abraham had many sons. You may not, but what we will do, because we can't go into the full detail of this story, is we can hit the highlights a little bit. Abraham is born, as many people know, he's born as Abram, which means father of many. And so he's born, he's called out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and he's told you're going to be the father of nations, but your name is Abram. It's not until he's 75 years old. that God tells and makes this promise to him that that he's going to be the father of nations but for 75 years his name is father of many and in that culture, you you lived into your name your name dictated something about you and You you can't you just can't move through the story of Abraham without imagining some of the context of him living alongside peers and friends and relatives that see his name as father of many, but yet he's child, childless. And then at age, at age 75, he's told, oh, you're going to be the father of many nations. His name hasn't changed yet, but God makes this promise to him. 10 years after that, Abraham and, or Abram and, and Sarai, Sarai just means princess or my princess. They then go about it their own way and give birth to Ishmael through Hagar, through her servant. it's then after that, 15 years later after that. So Abraham is 99 years old. His body is as good as dead. He has Ishmael. He's offered him up to God and said, just use this son Ishmael. And God's like, that's not the fulfillment of the promise that I have made. But he's 99 years old. His name is now being changed to Abraham. God has officially changed his name to Father of Nations. And you could only imagine him going to his peers and his friends and saying, God has changed my name. And they're like, did he change your name to Father of One? Because that's the only son that you have. But God had changed his name to Father of Nations. And in Romans 4, it talks about the kind of faith. that Abraham had in God's promise against everything to the contrary. But it's because of who God is. I know we just said, like, we don't have this blind faith that all evidence goes against this, but I'm going believe it anyway. This is different. God has told this to Abraham and he has made it unbelievably clear to him. This is who I am and I have made this promise to you. And it says Abraham's faith is unwavering. It's not a faith that he just had that he just believed. It's it's a faith that he acted upon and that he followed through on and continued to follow what God laid out for him so much so that as we know he gave Sarah had her name changed to mother of nations and she gives birth to Isaac and and Abraham brings this to fulfillment and even his willingness to sacrifice his son because he knows God is going to fulfill this promise with him But Abraham has this faith that is undeterred and unbelievable and seemingly impossible. There's this phrase that comes in that I know Shelly you've used so many times before. And what's that phrase? When things look impossible, but God. Some of my very favorite, favorite words in scripture. And so here, I mean, let's put ourselves in their place just for a second. Their bodies are good as dead is what scripture says. Every piece of evidence says this is impossible, but God, but God steps into the story, right? Think about it just for a second. Can you imagine being Sarah? She is 90 years old. Her friends are planning funerals. She's planning a baby shower. There had to be a mix of embarrassment, hope, confusion, laughter, fear. It must have been overwhelming. And yet the words you said earlier, are so deeply embedded in my soul. Scripture says Abram did not waver. in the midst of the impossible. Why? Because he knew who his God was. Yeah, and so they lived into these names that God gave them long before they held the fulfillment in their arms. And I think that's just a, it's such a beautiful story of what trust looks like. Their trust was placed in the one who's worthy of all trust. And that's God, that's God himself. And so that's what faith is, or that's what trust is. From a Christian worldview, it's trusting God. when your circumstances haven't caught up to the promises just yet. Because the one who's made the promises is faithful. I love that. So good. Our fourth point, true faith results in action. Faith isn't passive. It doesn't sit quietly in the corner saying, I hope this works out or crosses my fingers. Faith is grounded in an object, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Faith steps forward. Faith obeys. Faith reflects the character of the one in whom it trusts. Yeah, so faith has a demonstration and I think that's an important component of faith that often gets forgotten and again in culture because people just often say things like I have faith But how what does that faith look like? What's the evidence of that faith? How is that faith shown and and the in the life that you live because in scripture when we see people saying they have faith or they have trust in what god has said or promises that he's made there's actions that follow from from that trust it's demonstrated in what they do. so faith always results, true faith always results in action to substantiate that faith. And that's just something that's foreign to so many in culture that just say faith is this mysterious force that we don't quite understand, but I just tap into it in order to make myself feel better. But it requires actions that make sense and show that you actually do trust the one in whom that you've placed your faith in. So yeah, so important to remember. that just like we. it from relationship. And that's, I think that's exactly what you're trying to say. That's exactly right. Yeah, and so just like Abraham's face showed up in his actions long before it showed up in his reality, real faith looks just the same today. We trust God because of who he is and because he's good, yes, and because he's faithful and because he's just and because he's God overall. We're able to fully place our faith or our trust in him. Breck, reminds me, I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Unapologetics Conference, and uh my title was, If God is Good, Why is My Life Falling Apart? And where do we place our trust, our faith, our trust, when we can't feel God's goodness, when we don't see it played out in front of us? And I think if we're honest, we've all been there. There are loved ones we've lost. There are health that we've lost, lost dreams, lost finances, lost and broken relationships. And in those moments, Lord, Lord, I want to trust. I want to have faith, but it's not the manifesting faith that we talked about. It's I know who my God is. And so in the middle of my talk, it was just kind of unplanned, but I'm like, Hold on, it's time for a commercial break. And I said, hey, is there anything God can't do? Is there anything God can't do? And the room was a little bit quiet and a lot of no, ah no, there's nothing God can't do. And then an older lady in the front says, well, he certainly can't sin. Which made me smile, but I'm like, A, we're onto something. So what I think is really important as we're talking that our faith is putting trust in a God whom we know, we also have to realize something about him and it helps our faith anchor deeply. God cannot do anything outside of his person's character and nature. God can't act unlovingly because God is love. And so when we talk about faith, can we just take a moment to talk about God's faithfulness, God's trustworthiness. God is faithful, period, end of story, which means God cannot act against that. So doing a double negative, which means a positive, God cannot not be faithful, right? I mean, think about it for a second. God cannot not be faithful. He cannot go against his person's character and nature. And I think that's so important. Why can we trust him? Because he is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He cannot go against who he is. Can we breathe a deep breath? If you are in a season where you don't feel God's goodness, when he doesn't feel close, know his character. trust his heart and know that he will never leave you or forsake you and he cannot not be faithful to you, to his name, to his church. So I think it's just a sweet reminder of that's the God we serve. That's the God who we reason with. That's the God that we're brought into relationship and say that is in whom my faith and my trust rests. Sorry, did that get preachy? I didn't mean it to get preachy. Well, no, didn't at all. In fact, it leads right into the practical takeaways. We always want to take the things that we're talking about and say, hey, it's great to think about four things that we forget about faith and to look at two things that faith is not and to look at two things that faith is and have a better understanding of those. Yeah, we did. And it's important to ground ourselves in those and then put them into work. And that's what we want to talk about really quick here. Just a few takeaways that I think are really important. Like how do I put this into practice? Holidays are coming up and our faith is going to be tested with family. That is true. There are friends and family that come together and that can provide some difficult situations. So here's some things to keep in mind. One, we live bold faith even when our circumstances contradict or seem to contradict the promise that's before us. Like Shelly had just said, God is faithful all the time. God is good all the time. God is on his throne all the time. But our lives are oftentimes very messy. And they can seem time second sometimes feel like they they're out of order and there there are many times that we have to come to God and when we come to Him correctly and we say God I don't know what you're doing, but I know who the one is that's doing it and so because I know who you are I know that I can trust that you're working things out exactly as you intend them to work out for your glory. And because you are my God and what I care most about is for your glory, is to worship you, then I submit all my plans and all my thoughts and all my criteria and objectives. I submit that to you because I care most about your plan. So even when things feel like they're unstable. And we're able to relate to this a lot every day where things just don't seem right or don't seem good and we have to come to Him. And again, I repeat this because it's really important to say, God, I don't know what it is you're doing, but I know who the one is that's doing it. And because of that, I have my faith and trust not in my situations and not in my circumstances and not in emotional highs and lows. but I have my faith and trust in the unchanging God who is for me. And I can trust that. And because of that, I can move through the different situations of life knowing who the God is that's taking me through them. uh once say on that very point, he said, the sun is the sun. The sun doesn't move. The sun is this amazing, bold, unfathomable object. Earth moves. The sun doesn't move. And sometimes we feel that sun on our face and we know it's there and we see it. And sometimes it's night. and we don't see it, but yet we know it's there. And other times the clouds roll in, right? But the sun doesn't change. And so just interesting that just brought to mind something when you said that, I think that's so gold. We live bold faith even when our circumstances don't, it seems to contradict the promise or contradict the word of God. We know that the sun has not moved and we can anchor. into that. That's such a good takeaway. One more. I think another one is like we talked about with Abraham and Sarah and with the story that you told as well. And the discussion we had with the Mormons is that you let your faith be visible. Faith isn't meant to be hidden just like Jesus says the light isn't meant to be covered by a basket and hidden. We are to be a city on a hill. people, faith is meant to be seen. It's meant to be put into action because faith means trust. And trust is placed in an object or a person. And the object or person that your faith should be placed in is God. And so if our faith and trust, if our trust is placed in God, that should be evident in the way that we're living our lives. I know we've said this before, but you don't want to be in a situation where you're talking to somebody and you've known them for a few months or maybe even years and you end up telling them, hey, know, yeah, I'm actually a Christian. And they're like, really? I didn't know that. And I know I've said that before, but this is relevant to bring that up. If your faith is in action, your trust is in that, your trust is evident that your trust is in God. Then when we live that out, it's evident how we see. So sometimes I like to think about faith as almost like a flashlight, because it's something you hold and you shine it on something else. If your flashlight of faith is shining upon God, it's concentrated on him, then your trust is in him and it's evident in how you live. However, the further that you step back from God's Word, and the further you step back from consistent prayer, and the further you step back from participating in church, in the body of Christ, in wise counsel, the further you step back, the more that light begins shining on other things. And your trust begins to diffuse. And now your trust begins to be put in other things like possessions, or in position, or in... and some and some and money or monetary money, monetary things. But your trust, your faith, your trust begins to become diversified to where now God only has, you know, 30 percent of your trust now. And so, of course, you begin to feel like you're wandering and you're a little bit lost and you feel distant. And it's not because the object has moved. It's because your faith has become diffused. And that's a really important thing to remember when it comes to faith is that your actions will reveal where your faith is actually placed, whether it's diffused upon many uh diffused through many things or whether it's focused and concentrated on the persons of God. And that's really important to keep in mind that your faith should result in actions that can be seen, that your trust is in God alone. That is convicting. Great takeaway. Well, I think this wraps up our time today on the NN4 podcast. If this conversation helped you see Jesus clearly, would you take a moment to like it, share it, or subscribe? Yeah, and it really does help get conversations in front of more people who are trying to Jesus in the middle of just a very confused culture. Well, next month, Christmas is coming. This is a big teaser. We are headed to Bethlehem, taking a fresh look at the Nativity, not the greeting card Pinterest-worthy version, but the real story beneath the story. And we'll see why this story changes all other stories in very unique and powerful ways. Well, you won't want to miss it. We'll see you next time right here at In & For Podcast.