Category: faith

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Faith comes Through Revelation

I’ve been thinking about what faith really is for over 20 years now. The other night, just being in bed, I received a revelation that furthered my understanding on this topic.

We have been told that faith is so many things. We have been told that it is a spiritual force. We have been told that it is a spiritual law, and that it works much like any physical, natural law. But I’ve never felt that those ideas were quite right. I fear they treat God as a kind of push-button God, who reflexively responds to faith on demand. Somehow, I don’t think that God is like a computer program, where if you punch in the right code, He does what you want Him to do. It reduces God to the status of a tool, and that just can’t be right.

Immediately, a few verses came to mind.

In Ephesians 2:8, the bible states that we are saved by faith, and that it is the “gift of God.” And in Romans 12:3, Paul indicates that a “measure” of faith is assigned to all believers. And in 1 Corinthians 12:9, faith is said to be a spiritual gifting.

Finally, we find that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

So, why? Why does faith come from hearing the bible?

I realized that faith comes by revelation, through an epiphany, that comes by meditating on the gospel or God’s ways.

Of course. Because the christian walk itself starts with a realization, that we need God and His ways in our lives, or that we are sinful, or that Christ is the messiah.

So, I realized that faith is not some ethereal force or some mechanical spiritual law or principle, but just a gifting of revealed knowledge. It comes through revelation.

And revelation is just a windfall of understanding. It is that “aha” moment of sudden and impactful realization. And it is always personal, always a moment of awakening.

That is why it is critical to hear the Word, to speak the Word, to be around the Word, to think on and meditate on the Word. The Word is your source of personal revelation, which really are just gifts of faith.

When God speaks to you, or reveals something to you, in His own voice and through His own Words, you come to recognize God. You come to develop faith in His voice and in His word by constantly encountering Him over and over. This is how relationships are built. This is how trust and confidence are gained. This is how faith works.

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No faith. No Freedom.

freedom talk cloud.

If there is one thing that any society cannot afford to lose, it is faith, and people of faith. Faith is the glue that holds together a free and safe society. Without faith, there cannot be freedom.

What is it that all communist and extremist socialist societies need, more than anything else?

They need a citizenry that will comply and conform to cultural conventions set by the state apparatus. They need a robotic, workaday citizenry, who are willing to silently and internally groan at the authoritarian government structure, but hold back on outrage, on rebellion, on putting their lives at risk in order to bring change.

Years ago, there was a horrific story that came out of Communist, authoritarian China. An infant had crawled out from the sidewalk and into the road and had subsequently been struck by a car.

Video shows one good citizen after another walk by the dying, injured infant, stop and look, and then push on. Cars slowed down and people gawked, but nobody stopped, nobody helped.

The fact is, that once you can successfully remove religious faith from a society, and replace it with servile obedience to the god-like state, you won’t have to worry about the people stepping out of line. There will be no bravery. There will only be cowed drones.

You see, the thing about faith in God, or even in what is right and what is wrong, is that it becomes more important than yourself, and your own well-being. You begin to realize, as a man or woman of faith, that doing what is right is more important than preserving one’s body and health and life.

In fact, the older that you get, as you look back on your life and the decisions made in it, you begin to realize that doing the right thing was the only thing that mattered. You realize that you are not defined by your gender, your race, your culture, your relationships, or anything else but your sense of right and wrong. In fact, I will go so far as to say that being a man is just being a person who knows what is right, and puts that above all else.

You cannot have a safe and free society without people willing to die for what is right. You cannot have freedom from tyranny and authoritarianism without a populace that is willing to die for what is right.

This is the rather obvious reason, historically, that communist and socialist countries crack down on the church as their first order of business. It is not religion that they are afraid of, per se, but faith. They know that to accomplish their social objectives by force, they cannot have people willing to put their own lives and social standing in jeopardy for what is right. They cannot have a society of do-gooders; the kind of people who will see a bleeding, dying, mortally-injured child in the street and stop to help, despite the social risk, because they that is the right thing to do, persecution be damned.

No. ‘The good’ must be viewed as a distribution from the government. The government must be seen as the source of distributed goodness, as it were. Individual, personal charity must replaced by a willingness to pay higher taxes, to sacrifice their lot for the greater societal good.

Conform. Pay your dues. Don’t make a stir. Be a good citizen by viewing yourself, not as an independent agent of goodness, but merely as a small contributor to the overall ocean of positive change enacted by the authorities.

Faith in God, and especially a God that is always watching, is replaced by a constant surveillance by your fellow citizens, neighbor, police and digital overlords.

Therefore, faith in a personal God, and His watchful eye, must be replaced by obedience to the equally ever present observation station of the supreme authority of the government. That is how it works.

It is not faith that they are after, even, but a belief that if you resist, if you step out of line, you will be caught, and ostracized, exiled, and punished in this present time. You will be canceled, shut up, censored, banned from communal activities, even re-educated.

Faith is the driver of freedom. A self-determinate person, who is willing to do good, or do the right thing, is the greatest danger to authoritarianism. Faith is more than just the glue, but the very fabric of freedom woven into a free societal superstructure. Without freedom, faith is replaced by cowardice, by fear, by fretful conformity to societal rules and obligations. True faith is a personal commitment to risk in the face of overwhelming societal dangers. It always was, and always will be– just that.

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creative essays faith Uncategorized

A Word for Today.

Christians and all good people must remember that our fight isn’t against marxism, or racism, or any ism, but against powers, evil and spiritual forces. This is where many have allowed themselves to become confused.

I am just as guilty as anyone. I rail against socialism. I rail against the counterfeit morals of the world such as racism. But we should probably dig beneath the surface, to explore why people are turning to these ideologies.

I think it is because people no longer believe in the power of love, but instead believe in authority, and control. Perhaps because they cannot control themselves, they believe that everybody must be controlled fully, by government, by the state, by the sword, if necessary.

Our christian concepts have not gone away. The truth is that people still feel a deep desire for these moral ideas. All you have to do is listen to the godless, the political maniacs, the atheists and socialists. It is obvious that they do indeed believe in evil, but they just call it by another name.

For example, racism has become the new evil. We are told it is everywhere, systemic, invisible, in everyone, and we are to repent of it.

Every christian and good person can unite under the flag of a war against evil, against sin, against hatred. But when we use the world’s moral language, confusion and chaos is the result. The proof is all around us today.

The real problem with these new concepts is that they do not have a strong claim to accuracy.

For example, any moral fault that an accuser is free from is not a valid religious moral concept. Jesus said as much. We are all guilty of murder, of adultery, of hatred, he said. When a sin (racism) can only be owned by a certain race, it is not valid.

We have to be careful as believers not to promote an alternative moral dynamic to the one laid out over 2,000 years ago, not one based on humility, not one that can be solved by love, as it only exists in the mouths of accusers as a secret, dubious deposit of intent on the souls of others.

The world has abandoned evidence, reason, logic, and all good sense, it seems. They apply their slurs on their opponents without discrimination.

We need to ask ourselves why. What do they see?

They see exactly what you and I see.

They see evil, everywhere, in everyone.

But they have lost hope in love, succumbed to defeatism and nihilism, and now support fully the authority of the state to impose order on everyone.

They have lost faith, is all.

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creative essays faith

Faith is the Substance, Explained.

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“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

This is a verse that can be baffling upon first glance. But I am going to break it down part by part so that you will understand what faith actually is.

Let us start with the phrases.

Faith is the evidence. Even in a fallen, evil, corrupted world, that appears godless, a billion people believe in a good God. Faith is the evidence that the argument from evil is a weak one, holding no power at all. The faith of a billion, who have suffered, who have lost much, who have been persecuted unto death–is the evidence of things hoped for.

Make no mistake about it, but faith itself is an evidence of God’s goodness, especially when you consider the fallen and godless state of the world.

Faith is the substance. When we think of faith, we usually think of an airy kind of presence, or a misty cloud of metaphysical stuff, but we don’t often think of a substance. But faith really is substance, and evidence. It can be seen, felt and heard. It can be touched and handled. Hope is the airy stuff, but faith is the fulfillment or the completion of hope. Think of faith as hope made flesh.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, we are told. The substance of things. It is the substance, as in the sticky wet substance on your hands, which you have a hard time cleaning yourself of once you have it. Faith is like that, sticky and adhesive. Once you have it, it leads to more faith, because as the Bible says, we move “from faith to faith.”

We hope for heaven. Faith is the substance of heaven. Therefore it is saying that faith is the substance of heaven here on earth!

It is the evidence of heaven here on earth!

Faith is so much more than a mere confidence, or even a sense of assurance. It is the substance of that confidence.

It is actually the completion of that confidence. Faith is the thing you hoped for, in your hand. Faith is the evidence, the actual object transferred to you, visible to you. It is the reality of the thing, or the substance of it.

I suppose even prayer is a kind of faith. Prayer is the evidence of things not seen, that they exist. Prayer is the acting out of confidence that those things exist, the proof of confidence, or the proof of faith. Prayer is the evidence of faith!

And therefore faith is the evidence of things not seen.

So our confidence is the evidence to the world. This is important: our confidence in God is the evidence to the world of things unseen, of heaven and goodness and love and Christ. Our confidence is the evidence that we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

Think about it: If we are not full of faith, and we are fretful and fearful, we are not proving God to be loyal, to be a good God to us. When the bible states that faith is the evidence, it is telling us that it is the evidence to the unsaved, to the world. It is the evidence of our hope, to your community, to your friends and family. Faith is an outer display of confidence in God that others see, and then want for themselves. It is the best witness that you can have toward anyone.

Think about it again: You cannot have faith without the evidence of your hope. You cannot truly have a hope without the evidence of faith. To others, you are as hopeless as they are if you don’t have an outward demonstration of faith. If you don’t have the confidence that comes from faith, they will not see God in you, or that God is with you.

In a way, faith is the evidence of our victory over the devil, over hell, over death. We walk in faith by walking in victory, by walking victoriously.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, it says. That makes a kind of sense to me, because it is by faith in Christ that God created the universe and us, as an act of faith in our ultimate redemption. So faith really is the substance of the universe. It really is the ground of all that exists, for without it, we would not exist.

But let us talk about things not seen. I believe Paul refers to the promises of God here. He is saying that faith is the evidence of the promises, which sounds strange, at first glance. But the promises mean nothing if there is no one who believes in them, because if you believe in a promise, you are going to act accordingly. If you believe that you are going to receive something, you are going to act in an anticipatory manner. Therefore, the evidence is a way of going about your affairs, expecting good things. One again, we find that faith is not some mystery force or a supernatural law, but directly exhibited by behavior.

We don’t see the things now, but faith is evidence of their coming. Therefore faith is anticipatory behavior, or actions taken in anticipation of the promises. It means to be brave instead of fearful. It means to be confident instead of doubting. Our confidence inspires others to have confidence in God also.

This is important, that you realize that your outward display of faith is the greatest apologetic asset that you have. If you want to get family members saved, be confident in God. Act out of faith, and always with bravery and full assurance that he will deliver on his promises.

Always remember that cowardice is a sin.

And that faith is the opposite of fear.

And that the Bible says, that without faith, we cannot please God.

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Rachael Carman has a detailed breakdown of this verse, word by word right here.

Read my article titled: “How Faith Keeps the World Going”

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creative essays faith revelation

How Faith keeps the World Going

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Over thousands of years of human history, we, as a race, have experienced plagues and pandemics that have wiped out hundreds of thousands of people. They have swept through countries and territories, taking livestock, children, mothers, priests and princes alike. If you had a family at the time, you may have lost two sons and your wife. You might have only had your two daughters left to you. But you were not the only one. Nobody went untouched.

These were dark times, full of suffering, pain, misery, and with much wailing filling the streets. There are stories during the black plague of priests performing last rites day and night, and comforting the afflicted, knowing that they too would need their own rites and to be comforted by others.

Think of the terrible amount of pain and suffering the head of a family might have experienced. Now think of everybody in that generation experiencing something similar. Every family being stricken, having lost from one to three members.

What survived?

The church survived. But also the faith.

If faith can survive that, over and over throughout human history, then it has already proven itself as a valid method for keeping on. It is a tool in the human psychological and emotional toolbox that is as old as mankind, proven to be trustworthy. Proven to be very human.

And it is still thriving.

Faith is just as valuable as any drug, or any psychological treatment program. Not just valuable, but something that has held its value through era after era. It has retained its worth, like a stock that has never faltered or bottomed out.

I dare say faith is the most valuable asset a man can possess. Without faith, a man is less-than what his maximum potential might be. He is unprepared for loss, for heartbreak, for sufferings, for traumas. A man without faith is a man whose mental toolbox is missing a hammer, or a screwdriver, or some other essential tool. When or of the time comes that they will need this tool, it will not be there for them.

The same could be said of war. Generation after generation have lost untold amounts of men and children to the rigors of world wars, tribal wars, and civil wars. Single battles have taken up to 25,000 lives or more, over and over again.

What has survived?

Faith has survived. The church has survived. A belief in God has survived, but even more remarkable than that, a belief in a GOOD God has survived and flourished all over the planet.

There has never been a problem of evil for faith.

Faith is going to survive war and pandemics. It is going to survive atheism and socialism. It is going to survive false religions and civil uprisings and national disturbances. It will survive riots, commotions, elections and upheavals of all manner.

And if you are human, and count yourself as one of us, you are going to need it, too. It is the most valuable and precious resource on the planet.

Don’t be afraid to be human, to have faith. You may need it some day.

In fact, I know you will. Don’t be caught sleeping on faith.

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