Good Morning.
It is going to be one of the ten best days. Alice and I walked for an hour last evening; praise the Lord for the brilliant moon. Praise the Lord for the unhurried sun. Praise the Lord for beauty of the earth. Praise the Lord for the nations and the people groups of the world. It is a great blessing to be alive in such times as this. Sunita and Andy are already in New Delhi. Their friends from Washington, DC are in Calcutta, the city of Mother Teresa. We will all be meeting in Bubaneswar on Sunday.
As I prepare for our long trip, I was reading from Hebrews 11. It is the Faith Chapter. Faith is a common denominator. Every one alive daily expresses faith in something. No one can live a single day without exercising faith – at the very least we show faith in the physical world. For instance, when you awoke this morning you flipped a light switch and you had faith that it would work. When you get in your car you have faith that it will start. Faith is also expressed in the spiritual realm. Each of us regardless of our backgrounds or educations, our social status, or our talents can express faith.
The difference between the faith we exercise in our daily routine and our religious faith is the object of that faith. Moslems puts their faith in the Koran and in Mohammed. The humanist put his faith in himself. Many place their faith in their own good works. None of these can save, because the object of their faith is wrong. Our faith is only as good as the object in which we place our faith. The Bible insists that we personally put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Acts 4:12 says, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Further, in Hebrews 11 it is written, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”
True faith is confident obedience to God’s word in spite of circumstances or consequences. Faith is described in a two-fold way. It is the “substance of things hoped for,” and “the evidence of things not seen.” In Greek the word which we translate as substance is really the foundation that gives the believer the confidence to stand. The verse could be translated “faith is the confidence of things hoped for.”
This is illustrated in the life of the missionary Hudson Taylor. “When Hudson Taylor, the famous missionary, first went to China, it was in a sailing vessel. Very close to the shore of cannibal islands the ship was caught in a calm, and it was slowly drifting toward the shore …and the savages were eagerly anticipating a feast.
"The captain came to Mr. Taylor and sought him to pray for the help of God. ‘I will,’ said Taylor, ‘provided you set your sails to catch the breeze.’ The Captain declined to make himself a laughing stock by unfurling the sails in a dead calm. Taylor said, ‘I will not undertake to pray for the vessel unless you will prepare the sails.’ And it was done.
"While engaged in prayer, there was a knock at the door of his stateroom. 'Who is there?' The captains voice responded, ‘Are your still praying for wind?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well,’ said the captain ‘you better stop praying for we have more wind than we can manage.’” [Paul Lee Tan. Encyclopedia of 7,700 Illustrations. (Rockville, Maryland: Assurance Publishers, 1979). # 1493]
Further, the word describing what faith is, is translated “evidence” and means “conviction.” This inward conviction enables the believer to believe things not yet seen, that God perform what he has promised.
Another story of a captain of a ship illustrates this point. “The story is told by the captain of a ship on which George Mueller of Bristol was traveling. (Mueller was a man who had several children’s homes and depended on God alone to provide for them.) During his lifetime he received more than 1,000,000 pounds from the Lord without advertising – every penny came as an answer to prayer.
"'We had George Mueller of Bristol aboard', said the captain. ‘I had been on the bridge for twenty-four hours and never left it and George Mueller came to me and said, ‘Captain, I have come to tell you that you must be in Quebec on Saturday afternoon.’ ‘It is impossible.’ I said. ‘Then very well, if your ship cannot take me, God will find some other way. I have never broken an engagement in fifty-seven years; let us go down into the chart room and pray.’
‘I looked at that man of God and thought to myself. What lunatic asylum can that man have come from, for I never heard of such a thing as this?’ ‘Mr. Mueller,’ I said, ‘do you know how dense this fog is?’ No he replied, ‘my eye is not on the density of the fog, but on the living God who controls every circumstance of my life.’ He knelt down and he prayed one of the simplest prayers. When he had finished I was going to pray, but he put his hand on my shoulder and told me not to pray. ‘As you do not believe He will answer, and as I believe He has, there is no need whatever for you to pray about it.’
‘I looked at him and George Mueller said, ‘Captain, I have known the Lord for fifty-seven years and there has never been a single day when I have failed to get an audience with the King. Get up, Captain and open the door and you will find the fog has gone.’
‘I got up and the fog indeed was gone and on that Saturday afternoon George Mueller kept his promised engagement.” [Paul Lee Tan. Encyclopedia of 7,700 Illustrations. (Rockville, Maryland: Assurance Publishers, 1979). # 1494] That is the conviction that only faith can bring.
In Christ,
Brown
http://youtu.be/sv55FMjeMV0
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