What is Faith?

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)

"A man's belief," says Dr Albert Ellis, a well-known modern-day psychologist, "determines both his conduct and his character." Our text for today, written almost 3,000 years before Ellis, puts the truth in an even more succinct form. There are two possibilities before each of us as we look at life: we can base our conclusions about the meaning of life on what the humanistic philosophers, poets and historians tell us, or we can base them on what God tells us in His Word. Either we take the Word of God and live by it -- or we do not. If we take the attitude that the prophets didn't know what they were talking about and there are no such things as miracles in the universe, then we do what the writer to the Hebrews told us about yesterday -- we draw back from the godly way of life. "The Biblical way is living by faith." Listen to the word given to Habakkuk once again: "The just shall live by his faith" (Hab. 2:4, AV). Faith is taking the Word of God and relying on it. It involves believing what God says, simply and solely because He said it. The heroes of faith listed in Hebrews 11 did just that -- they had no real reason for believing what God told them, other than the fact that He had spoken. Why did Abraham take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah? Why did he prepare to offer him as a sacrifice? Simply because God had spoken. A little boy, when invited to comment on the statement, "Faith is having confidence in what God has spoken," said: "God has confidence in what He has said—so must we.”

Every Day Light Vol 1 - Daily Inspirations, Day 101

By Selwyn Hughes