More on Faith

 I said yesterday that God wants us to try Him and see ---- Scripture tells us that anyone who comes to God must (1) believe that He exists and (2) that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

In previous days, God spoke to our forefathers -- and they believed what God had spoken:  Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

They told their descendants what God had spoken to them.  Hearing the stories of their ancestors, people dared to believe in the existence of the God of which they had heard, and they dared to believe that He rewards those who seek Him.

God still speaks to us today -- through men and women of faith and experience, but also through the Scriptures, the story of how God has acted in human history.  Even greater, God sent His very Word in flesh for us through His beloved Son, that we might actually hear God speaking to us as He did in the past.

I once asked my neighbor this question:  I know WHAT you believe, but WHY do you believe it?  I had been thinking about how we come to a living faith in God, a faith that is real and personal.  She said that she had never had a conversion experience, as some people have had, but that she had been taught about God all her life.  When she started reading the Scriptures for herself, the Holy Spirit seemed to bring them to life for her -- to make them real.  It is the office or job of the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the Living, spoken Word of God to us-- to make Jesus Christ real for us.

In the beginning, when God began creating the heavens and the earth, the Spirit of the Lord hovered over the waters of chaos.  And God spoke: Light! Be!  Here we have the Speaker, the Word, and the Breath of  God bringing forth a new creation.  

Scripture is not only about what God has done; it is always and ever about what God is DOING.  All of His acts are living and eternal.  He is still speaking His eternal Word; the Word is still active; and the Spirit is still hovering over our chaos.  

It has been said faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes through Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father.  If we want to believe God, we must first know what He has spoken, either through the Scriptures or through a relationship with the Word of God, Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit makes that happen in our lives.  Even now, He is hovering, just waiting to bring about a new creation for us and in us!