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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Mark Finley

What is Faith?

Good morning and happy Sabbath I've been praying that God will do something special in our meeting today.

We're living in an hour verse history We're simply coming to a meeting and leaving but the same people is no longer an option Every time we come to a meeting in which we seek God in Bible study and in prayer, we have an opportunity for His Spirit to touch our hearts and do something special.

So let's bow our heads just momentarily once again.

Father, we thank you that you are more anxious to touch us than we are to be touched.

You're more anxious to heal us inside than we are to be healed.

We pray that you would come today, speak to our hearts and to our minds, heal our weary, sin-sick souls, and draw us closer to you.

Number of years ago I was pastoring a little church in Georgia.

And often we gave Bible studies to people that lived back in the mountains.

You drive back on dirt roads and come into little cabins.

Some of those cabins, even today, don't have electricity.

I am not suggesting that everybody in Georgia doesn't have electricity.

But there are those isolated spots and back in the hills I remember 1 day I was back in the hill country giving a Bible study.

I'd given Bible studies this family for about 6 months and As I was sitting giving them a Bible study in a little log cabin, dirt floor, no electricity, no running water, a man came into the cabin smoking a big cigar.

And the first words out of his mouth as he smoked this cigar were, praise God, I'm healed.

And I was a younger man at the time and a little bolder.

So I said to the big cigar man, big cigar man, what are you healed of?

About 6 months ago, I went to my physician.

And my physician told me that I had a spot on my lung and further tests revealed that it was malignant.

But I just went back for a continued checkup after the last 6 months and now there is no spot on my lung, there is no malignancy.

I said to the big cigar man, you know, again, I was a little younger and I wasn't as careful and diplomatic as what I might say today.

And I said to him, big cigar man, what about your big cigar?

What did the doctor say about that cigar?

And he looked at me and in all seriousness he said, young man, don't you know if you have enough faith, you can smoke as many big cigars as you want.

Because cancer cannot touch you if you have enough faith.

And he said, the problem with you young preacher is you don't have enough faith.

Now my question is this, was the big cigar man right?

If you have enough faith, can you smoke all the big cigars that you want?

And because of the dynamic power of faith, cancer will not touch you at all.

If you have enough faith, can you eat as much ice cream as you want, and pie, and cheesecake, and you'll not gain a pound, because faith is so powerful it will turn back the results of any physical lifestyle practices.

If you have enough faith will you always be healthy, wealthy, and wise?

If you have enough faith, will your marriage always go right and you never have a conflict with your wife?

If you always have enough faith, will your children always make the right decisions and never get into any problems in their life?

If you have enough faith, will you always have adequate money to buy whatever you want?

If you have enough faith, will you never get sick?

And is sickness the result of lack of faith?

If you have enough faith, will life be like floating on a cloud with the winds of the Spirit to the kingdom of God?

In fact, faith is so important that God gives to us a whole chapter in the Bible about it.

Take your Bible, please, and turn to Hebrews, the 11th chapter.

And be prepared for some amazing surprises this morning as we study Hebrews chapter 11.

God considers faith so important, so significant to the Christian life, that in fact, faith is the only essential requirement for salvation if it's understood correctly.

Faith is so important that if you misunderstand it, you get off track in the Christian life.

And I will be so bold to you as to say today that what we see in American evangelical Christianity is often not faith at all.

It's a sugar-coated, candy-coated gospel that ultimately leaves you barren in the trials, in the difficulties and challenges of your life.

Faith is not something that if you have it, everything is going to go well in your life.

This candy-coated, superficial, surface vision of faith will ultimately, in your life, if that is what you grasp, sometimes let you down, someday let you down, and you'll be defeated and broken and crushed and bruised, and tend to give up on God.

Faith is far, far deeper than much of the superficiality that passes for faith in the modern world.

Let's look at scripture and discover what faith is and what faith is all about and practically applied in our life.

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

Faith stands under everything else in my Christian life.

Substance, submarine, a boat that goes under the sea, not a sandwich.

Subterranean, something that's under the earth.

You look at the word substance, and it has a variety of meanings.

In the Greek language, the word for substance means the essence of a thing.

A substance is the real thing as opposed to the artificial.

It is the genuine thing that supports everything else in our Christian life.

Another translation says faith is the confident assurance of things hope for it's the confident assurance when life seems Like it's in a world when my head is spinning When my wife has been diagnosed with cancer when my kid has been in a car wreck, when the bills are mounting up high, faith is the confident assurance that God still loves me.

It's the confidence assurance that He still cares for me.

It is the confident assurance that He's still in control of my life.

It's the essence of everything I hope for.

It's the essence of everything I dream about.

It's the foundation of my spiritual life.

It is the guarantee that all God's promises will be fulfilled for me, whether I can see it or not.

Faith is the guarantee that all of God's promises are going to be fulfilled.

Then the Bible gives to us a list of the heroes of faith.

Preliminary to that list, I'd like to share with you 2 definitions that Ellen White gives of faith.

1 is found in Signs of the Times, September 9, 1889.

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What is Faith?

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