Steps Of Faith: My Journey Part 3
In other words, believing is just accepting the fact that something is true.
Steps Of Faith: My Journey
Part 3
I learned a lot about faith, chatting with a friend about how faith is often misunderstood. A lot of people think they have faith because they believe in God. That’s not faith. That’s just believing.
Believing is the first step towards having faith but they’re not really the same thing. You can’t have faith without believing but you can believe without having faith. If that doesn’t make sense, here’s what James says this about believing:
James 2:19
“You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.”
In other words, believing is just accepting the fact that something is true. When we acknowledge that God is real we are believing something, but even Satan believes that. Just because I believe that God exists does not mean I am Christian, does it? Satan is a believer but he does not have faith in God.
Well, it’s the same with you and me. Just knowing that God is real doesn’t make a bit of difference in any of us until that knowledge makes the 9-inch drop.
Wait. What?
My friend explained that the distance between our head and our heart is about 9 inches. Our belief in God has to make the journey from head to heart before it becomes faith. Once it travels that 9 inches into our heart, faith can start the process of transforming us.
That’s where faith is born.
Faith happens when what you know starts impacting how you think, how you feel and how you act. Knowing about God is important but what God wants is for us to let Him into our hearts. Once He resides there, He is able to change who we are.
2 Corinthians 4:6
“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
Tomorrow, we’ll learn that belief and faith actually lead us to a third quality and we will look at a rich, young ruler in the Bible and how he struggled with understanding all three.
Can you guess what that third quality is? It’s what makes belief and faith work.
