Faith

After writing my last post, my brilliant brother popped up on facebook to tell me that although it's good to have hope, if you only have hope, you soon become hopeless. We need faith to keep our hope alive.

What is faith? Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we don't see. It isn't merely a way of thinking...Faith is an action word. James 2:26 says that faith without deeds is dead.  We are required to put our faith into action. In James 2:14 he asks the question, "what good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" The basis of his question was this; That even the devil believes in God in that way, but it won't save him from God's judgement. It's not enough to just believe, our actions need to mirror what we believe. Faith expresses itself through obedience and therefore true faith will show in the way we live our lives. This doesn't mean living according to a set of rules and regulations, we are justified by faith, not by the law and therefore we live by faith. This requires us to believe in what we don't see, and live each moment by the power of the Spirit (cool!) and not by our own human effort. Our faith has to be in Jesus and not in our good deeds or our striving to please God by living by the law. It means that when God speaks, we move. When God asks, we obey.

In Luke 18:8 Jesus asks "when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
To have faith is to carry on, sure of what we hope for, without giving in. Even when we're not seeing the immediate results, we see the ultimate end where our hope is anchored and that is how we can live by faith.

So when Jesus returns, will he have a people who have given up hope or a people who say an almighty "YES LORD" when he speaks?

Will he find faith?