How to
Have Faith
What is faith? How do you know if you have it? Will it do what you hope it will do?
People exercise faith every day without
realizing it. They go to doctors, receive prescriptions they can’t read, and take medicine they know very little about. In fact,
most people do so without examining the
doctor’s credentials, questioning the validity of the prescription, or investigating the
effects of the medicine. They could be
killing themselves, but they never think
twice about it. They simply trust that
the doctor knows what he’s doing and the
medicine will help. This is faith.
However, such faith is insufficient
when it comes to the big decisions of life:
what college to go to, what career to pursue, whom to marry. These are not things
most people accept blindly. They study
the benefits of each college, prepare for
careers, and think long and hard about
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whether to spend the rest of their lives
with someone.
One of the most important decisions
we will ever make will be where we will
spend eternity. Yet many people never
question their faith or evaluate what they
are trusting in. However, if we are going
to make spiritual decisions—life-or-death
decisions—that count for both time and
eternity, we should be sure we understand what kind of faith God accepts.
The New Testament defines faith in
Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen.” Faith is, first of all, an understanding that what we believe is real and
not an illusion, dream, or trick.
This is why, throughout the New
Testament, the writers challenged people
to examine the evidence of Jesus’ life,
death, and resurrection. Luke, one of the
Gospel writers, said at the beginning of the
(Fotosearch)
book bearing his name, “having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive
order . . . so that you might know the exact
truth about the things you have been
taught” (1: 3–4, NASB).
Real faith is faith in real things. It understands that what Jesus Christ did was historical fact, not fiction. But biblical faith is
even more. Hebrews 11:1 calls it ”
substance.” Faith is substance. It points to the
reality of an assurance that rests securely
in that in which it hopes. It is a conviction
that the historical facts are not merely
true in the same, mundane way as the
world history you learn in school; they
are truth God has revealed so that we can
know Him personally.
But real faith is still more. It is not
merely knowing—even being convinced—that something is true; but it
involves accepting it as true for you. Not
