I have faith, I think?
I am going through a difficult time financially. I have been out of work, that is full time work for over a year. I am a professional. I am educated and skilled. I have been doing what I do for more than a quarter a century. I do not have a job. I am at the level of money called broke.
I have moments of worry and doubt. I have moments of highs and moments of lows. My high moments come when I get an interview and the possibility of qualified work and my low moments creep in when I go to the mail box and I find another bill I can not pay. Highs and lows are a part of life and I believe they are natural. Faith on the other hand is not natural. My mind has to wrap itself around a concept, “...the evidence of things not seen...”.
People are welded to their five senses and the evidence they present to the body. Most of our senses are tied to our heads, sight, hearing, smell, taste while touch is all over our body. The eyes and ears tend to link together in our processing center. Smell and taste are physically linked and one can heighten or fool the other as in the apple – pear test. Touch is tricky. From the top of your head to the bottom of your feet it varies in degree. Some areas of the body are more sensitive than others, yet those areas are not used in exploring the world for a variety of reasons pain being the biggest reason to not expose those areas to the world.
For reasons more than the word 'seen' implies we fail in faith. Actually all of our senses come into play at all times. Our sensorium is the areas of the brain that process and register incoming sensory information and make possible the conscious awareness of the world and when we are aware there is the tendency to deny any thing that is not processed through that area. That is my humble estimation is being human, it is what people do, automatically, without external influence. What people do not do is that which is learned. Faith is a learned behavior.
What we do with behaviors, is dependent on multiple factors some which we control and a few we do not. How well we learn is dependent on the educating procedure. It can be formal, informal or a mixture of both. Early Christianity was informal, education was by word of mouth and example.
Rom 10:8 But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart: that is, the word of faith of which we are the preachers:
The early Christians had no New Testament. Scripture is the Old Testament writings and the spoken words followed by the epistles that were written and shared. Their faith was created and grew by the evidence of things not seen as they were beyond the days of Jesus but they grew in faith as they looked about at the substance of things hoped for that appeared in their lives. They extended their trust.
Faith is implied trust, trust is allowing one's self to be manipulated in someway by one or more others. Faith implies that one expects no harm to ensue from the manipulation. Defining the untranslated Greek evidence is proof or conviction and it also gets translated as assurance.
It there evidence in my life of what God has done for me, to me, and with me of course there is. Can I turn and show others the proof of what has been done for me, is it part of my witness, my story. Can I with the conviction of my life show to anyone that with Jesus in my life I have a better life.
Faith is also “...the substance of things hoped for...” again in the Greek we find that it is a restatement of assurance. So we get the assurance and conviction of what is not seen but hoped for but one who has faith in Jesus. This whole exercise in verbal manipulation is so that maybe I can overcome my “humanness”. I had a person pass through my life who warned me not to be intellectual about scripture. Being intellectual is the nature of this beast. It is not that the thinking excludes feeling but is spiritual connection, that sentiment that leads to a reaction based on the impression given by the indwelling spirit. The greater the spiritual connection the greater the faith, yes?
It is hard for the human to just believe.