Faith Belief and Trust

Faith has an element of uncertainty in it. A lot of western theology has had an issue with an uncertainty within faith.

The move often seems to place faith in the category of knowledge. There is some truth in this movement, but the bible always insists that the righteous will live by faith.

You see it makes no sense that the righteous live by faith if there is not an element of trust and need for belief that continues through the Christian life.

If someone in our church said in a prayer to God, "Lord I believe help my unbelief" churches would scoff. You see through the bible in the psalms of David and the great men and women of faith this sense of unbelief mixed with belief.

You see we have gone too far in our understanding of what is possible in the Christian life. To be a Christian is to continue to believe when things to not make sense and the chips seem down.

God is a good who delights in doing things his way. Sometimes he will send 300 men to win a battle when he could have sent 10,000. Sometimes he would prefer to get people where they should be in ways in which they do not like.

You see we always put God in a box and expect him to think as we think as if we think in a way which is good. We are always small and cannot see that we have no idea of how small we are.

Sin is always mixed though the Christian life. We always face unbelief and uncertainty. You see we see "through a glass dimly" as the Apostle Paul wrote.

The word of the Lord often comes in a still small voice. Sometimes the word of the lord is sent by unbelieving and wicked people to us.

But always God speaks and is there and supports our faith. You see he will not show us everything because it is not good for us. But he will always show us what we need to know and when we need to know it.

God has made many promises for his people in his word. These particularly take faith. Really we say has God kept his promises.

Sometimes I will doubt that God has kept his promises. You see life is hard and God has surely broken this promise in his word. But then I will reflect and see that God has not broken his promise at all and much of my hardship has simply been my weak faith.

You see faith often eases suffering because we trust that God has a plan and his provision or lack of provision has a reason. You see we don't trust that God knows what he is doing.

That is one crux of suffering is that unbelief increases suffering. Of course suffering is real the world is fallen and people suffer who have strong faith. But faith makes suffering more bearable as it happens.

Those who beliefs do suffer but the belief places the suffering into the context. The context is eternity and the eternity is eternity with God.

We should maybe thing of eternity like this if we had eternity to sit in the presence of Jesus at a table eating dinner with him would this make us happy?

You see it should because heaven is not about some sort of retirement vacation where we have maxed our 401K into an insane level and have more money than we could ever need.

Is suspect these things are true. The world is good and heaven is the world perfected but you see it is more it is relation with God and seeing God face to face.

It is the end of faith. Faith ends in the last day and is replaced by knowledge where we see God face to face. This knowledge is of course partial and incomplete.

You see we shall never see God fully only see him more and more each day. So the joy of heaven is always increasing as we learn more and more each day of the love of God.