Having Genuine Faith in God

It's been a wonderful day! I always enjoy Sundays, a day you can put aside just for God. You can spend the whole day at church and really enjoy it. With going to church, there are so many things that God has shown me. Not to mention my devotions this morning, God has been speaking a lot today, but it's been great! Anyway, I wanted to share with you an illustration that really hit home for me this morning. My pastor used it in his sermon this morning, and knowing him, it wasn't an original illustration either, but it was very good.

There are several verses in the Bible that talk about faith. In fact the word faith is used 247 times in the Bible. There are so many important things about faith. The biggest thing is, we need faith in God alone. We need faith that He sent His one and only son to die for us, we need faith that God has forgiven us from all of our sins, and we need faith that He has saved us. If you really think about it, aside from God, the basis of Christianity is faith. No matter what our religion is, we need to have faith in it in order to believe it. If you think about atheists, they have their own faith. They have faith in their own power and that there is no God. Evolutionists have that same kind of faith. They have faith that things just happened by coincidence. We as Christians also have faith. We have faith in God. If you think about it, everyone has a faith of one kind or another. Thinking about us as Christians though, do we have genuine faith in God?

Hebrews 11:6 says,

"And without faith it is impossible to please God"

If you read all of that same chapter, Hebrews 11 is the chapter of Faith. It lists off many people in the Bible who had real genuine faith. People such as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, The Egyptians, Joshua, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, Rahab, and that's just the beginning of examples in the Bible of faith. Do we have the same kind of faith these people had?

Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:7,

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith"

Can we say that in our lives, "I have kept the faith"?
But what does it mean to have real genuine faith?
Sure it's easy to say, "I Believe in God, I'm trusting in Him, I'm relying on Him, I'll do whatever he tells me to do" But is that really true in our lives. Our we saying that in our head or in our heart?

There was a man by the name of Charles Blondin. He is known for his dangerous feats of crossing over Niagara Falls on a 3 inch Manila tightrope. He did it several times in fact. He did it once normally, he once did a backwards somersault, he also did it blindfolded. He crossed while pushing a wheelbarrow, he crossed on stilts, he did it in the dark with Roman candles flaring from the ends of his balancing pole, he even stopped once and cooked an omelet on a portable stove and lowered it down to a boat below him. But one specific time took a real leap of faith, not for him, but for everyone watching. This one specific day, before he went up to the tightrope, he looked at the audience and said, "Do you believe I can carry someone across the rope on my back?" The crowd roared with thunderous applause, "Of course you can, You can do it, I know you can, We believe you can" So he took their word for it. He then asked the encouraging audience for a volunteer, the crowd stood silent. Nobody to volunteer? Of course they thought he could do it, but they didn't have enough faith to let him try it on them. Charles pointed to one man and said, "How about you, sir?" to which the man replied," Hardly, you don't think I'd risk my life like that do you?" Obviously he didn't have genuine faith. He turned to another man and said, "What about you? Will you trust me?" This man was a different story, He said, "I believe, In fact, I have no doubt at all, I will!" So this man crossed the tightrope, on the back of Charles Blondin. He had genuine faith. Do we?

Are we willing to give everything we have, and let God carry us each step of the way? He created us, He knows everything about us, He has a perfect plan for us, so why not trust in Him? As it says in Hebrews 11:6, if we want to please God, we need to have faith in Him. I know I need to work on that. I believe we all do. Sometimes it's easy to forget who God really is, but we need to have genuine faith in Him. We need to not only say in our heads, but in our hearts, "I will trust you" and in return we will be able to say, "I have kept the faith" Have a great night, God Bless!