|
What is Faith?
by Steve
Clark
Many
times the reason people feel they are unable
to have faith is that they misunderstand what
faith is. Often people think of faith as a
blind leap. According to this view faith
consists in deciding to believe that something
will happen even though there is no good
reason to do so. Faith is seen simply as a
blind act of the will, a leap with no
assurance that there is a landing place. There
are times in life when it is worth taking a
blind leap (sometimes we have no alternative),
but Christian faith, the faith which the Lord
Jesus spoke about, is not the same thing as
taking a blind leap.
In the letter to the Hebrews, faith is
described in the following way:
“To have faith is to be sure of the
things we hope for, to be certain of the
things we cannot see.” (Hebrews 11:1)
Although
we do not see the things we are having faith
for (if we saw it we would have knowledge of
it, not faith for it), yet faith gives us a
sureness, a certainty. We can have faith
because we know something that allows us to
expect that God will do certain things.
Christian faith is a faith in the unseen, but
it is not blind. A Christian does not have
faith when he is in darkness, but when he has
seen a light, and that light is God’s
revelation to us.
Sometimes a Christian has caught only a
glimpse of that light. Sometimes he can see
only dimly (and therefore makes mistakes). But
still he sees a light. Faith is a response to
the fact that God is there, and that he has
shown us what we can expect from him. Once we
know the truth, once we see (or begin to see)
by the light of revelation, we can have faith.
Faith is expecting God to do what he has shown
us he will do — expecting it, counting on it,
and doing those things which allow him to do
what he has shown us he wants to do.
Counting
on God's promises
There are many
ways that God reveals to us what he wants to
do. God reveals what he wants to do through a
promise that we know always holds. Then our
faith can be sure no matter what the
situation. Once we know that God has said he
always wants something to happen, then we can
simply count on it and expect it to happen. We
can find promises like this in scripture. One
such promise is the promise Christ made in the
eleventh chapter of Luke when he said that the
Father would give the Holy Spirit to those who
would ask him for it:
“Everyone who asks will receive, and
he who seeks will find, and the door will be
opened to him who knocks. Would any one of
you fathers give his son a snake when he
asks for a fish? Or would you give him a
scorpion when he asks for an egg? As stingy
as you are, you know how to give good things
to your children. How much more, then, the
Father in heaven will give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask of him!” (Luke 11:10–13)
After
I was prayed with to be baptized in the Spirit
at Duquesne, I had difficulty for a while in
opening up to the life of the Spirit. One of
the big questions for me then was, would “it”
happen to me or not? It happened to so–and–so
and it happened to so–and–so, but would it
happen to me? Would I ever get baptized in the
Spirit? I was not clear on what “it” was, and
since I had not experienced anything very
distinctive when I was prayed with, I was not
sure anything had happened. Therefore, I was
not sure whether I could experience any of the
things the Spirit was supposed to do for
people — tongues, guidance, or anything else.
I felt a great uncertainty, and therefore my
whole Christian life began to lose confidence.
At some point, I began to understand things
differently. I could see that according to the
scripture, the Holy Spirit is for everyone. If
you are a Christian, you can have the gift of
the Holy Spirit if you ask for it. That is
what the Lord promised in Luke 11. In fact, he
said that the Father was generous in giving
the Holy Spirit. He was eager for people to
have the Holy Spirit at work in their lives.
Christ seemed to say that the promise held
true regardless of the situation. Therefore,
since I had asked, I could count on having
receiving it.
My new understanding made things very
different. Once I began to proceed on the
basis that Christ’s promise was reliable, all
of a sudden things began to happen. I soon
yielded to tongues, began to experience the
Spirit guiding me, and began to experience
some of his power in prayer. Or rather, to be
more accurate, I did not so much yield to
tongues as come to discover that the Holy
Spirit had been prompting me to speak in
tongues all along, and that I had not really
had faith in it. I did not so much begin to
experience the Holy Spirit guiding me; rather,
I began to recognize the guidance he had
already been giving me. It was not so much
that God did something new for me; rather, I
began to have faith in the promise God had
made. I began to experience things happening
to me that the scriptures said were supposed
to happen.
There
are promises the Lord has made that we can
count on. Whenever the Lord says that
something will happen if something else is
done (“you will be given the Holy Spirit if
you ask for it”), then we know we can count on
that happening if we meet the conditions, even
if it remains unseen for a while. Whenever the
Lord give a command (“rejoice always”), or
describes the Christian life (“love is patient
and kind”), then we know we can have the power
to live that way as we grow as Christians. We
know that regardless of the situation, we
should expect all the things that are part of
the Christian life.
There are, however, many things that the Lord
would like to do (and that we need faith for)
that are not covered by universal promises.
Therefore, we cannot appeal to scripture to
know for certain that we can see them happen.
Maybe we want healing. Maybe we need some
money. Maybe we would like things to work out
so that somebody can hear about the Lord. We
know the Lord heals people, that he provides
for his people’s needs and that he wants
people to hear about him. But we cannot always
be sure that in this particular situation he
will heal, provide money, or arrange
circumstances. There are many such things that
come our way, but when we look through the
scriptures we cannot exactly find a promise
that will guarantee that we can expect these
things to happen.
The Lord has another way of revealing to us
what he is ready to do. As we grow in the life
of the Spirit, the Lord begins to speak to us
and lead us. Sometimes his direction comes to
us as an inner word. Sometimes it is just an
inner sense, a witness to our own spirit. We
come to know in a spiritual way that all we
have to do is ask for something and it will
happen or all we will have to do is act in a
certain way so that the Lord can work through
us and a certain result will happen. We get
directly form God a spiritual assurance.
A short while back, I was
speaking to a student who was not a Christian.
He had come back from summer vacation with
some serious difficulties. During the summer
he had faced the apparent meaninglessness of
his own life and he was anxious about what he
saw. He had come to me because we had known
one another before and he was wondering if God
was the answer. While I was talking with him I
began to get a sense, a quiet sense that the
Lord wanted to help him to see the Lord had
the power to do things for him. The thought
came to my mind, and I sensed that I could
pray for him and he would experience a
healing; that he would experience his anxiety
go away and would experience himself being
freed from some of the things that were
bothering him.
So I put faith in what God was showing me. I
talked to him for a while and then I said, “I
can pray for you. God has given me the power
to pray for you, and when I do, you will
experience a change. There will a new peace
afterwards.” He was willing to try anything,
so we prayed together, and as I prayed the
Lord led me in the prayer. I felt that I
should pray for the healing of some specific
things that had happened to him in the past.
As I was praying for one specific situation, I
had a mental image of Christ touching a red
sore spot and then of black matter flowing
out. Just as soon as that happened, he started
to cry and he began to talk about the
situation I prayed for. It was a purging
experience for him and when it was over, he
said that he had not realized how much that
situation had bothered him. By the time we
were done, there had been a healing. God had
done the very thing that I had promised he
would do.
We cannot always expect God to work this way.
After all, many times when we want to ask God
for a healing, healing is not the thing which
is needed. But when I was in that situation, I
had a sense that God was willing to do it for
him. In other words, God revealed to me
something that he would do. My part was to
have faith in that revelation — to believe
that it was actually from God, to rely on it,
and then to do what I had to do; to make a
promise to him on God’s behalf and then to
pray for him so that the promise would come
true. And it did.
There is yet a third way we can have faith
through God’s revelation. Sometimes we do not
have a universal promise that we can count on,
nor do we have some sort of direct leading or
word from the Lord about this particular
situation, and yet it is till right to have
faith in the situation. We may not have as
much assurance as we would like, but we can
still step out and have confidence in the
Lord. We do so simply because God has revealed
to us that he loves us and that he likes to do
good things for his children.
A few months ago a friend came to visit and
stayed overnight. When we got up for morning
prayers and breakfast, I noticed that he was
limping. One foot seemed to have some kind of
pain in it, and he could not walk on it very
well. After breakfast, we all prayed together,
and while we were praying the thought came to
mind — the obvious Christian thought — perhaps
we should pray for his foot to be healed. The
Lord heals people, and Christians have the
power to pray for such healings. There was a
certain reluctance for me to pray for it, but
I decided that if I believed in Christ, I
really ought to. So I suggested to him that we
pray for his foot to be healed, and he agreed.
I laid hands on him and we prayed for the
healing. Then we went back to morning prayers,
and after we had finished praying, I asked
him, “How’s your foot?” He said with a
surprised look on his face, “The pain is gone.
It’s healed.” And then I said with an even
more surprised look on my face, “It is
healed?”
Now it is fairly obvious that his foot was not
healed because we were filled with a great
feeling of faith. Nor had I felt any special
indication from the Lord that he wanted to
heal the foot. Moreover I do not believe that
there is any promise in scripture that the
Lord will always and everywhere heal
everything. But on the other hand, I know that
the Lord has promised that he will heal, and I
know that he life to give those who believe in
him what they ask for. I was able to put
enough faith in the Lord to pray for the
healing, and it happened.
We can also have faith even when we do not
receive an inner revelation from God or have a
specific promise from scripture about a
situation. We can do this because we know what
God is like. We know that he has power and
that he wants to work through us. We can make
that the basis of our “leap.” In other words,
God wants us to develop an overall attitude of
faith in him. He wants us to expect him to do
more and more — even when we cannot find a
specific promise that covers it or when we
have no specific leading for it. As we have
more and more faith in him, we will see more
and more happening.
Faith, then, is not a blind leap, but it is a
response to revelation. It is a response to
what we know of God and what he wants to do.
But it is a very particular kind of response.
Faith is the response we make to a rock. A
rock can be relied upon. A man can lean upon a
rock, or build upon a rock. He cannot trust
sand, but he can trust rock. Because it is
firm, he can count upon it and expect things
from it.
In the Psalms, the Lord is called our rock. He
is our rock, because we can rely upon him.
When he says something, we can count upon it.
If he indicates to us something will happen,
we can expect it. If he tells us to do
something, we should act upon it. We know,
because he is trustworthy, that we have a firm
footing when we walk in faith in him.
Three kinds of faith -
believing, trusting, and expecting faith
There are three kinds of faith —
believing faith, trusting faith, and expecting
faith — and we do not begin to see the glory
of God until we have expecting faith.
Believing faith could also be called doctrinal
faith. Many people have this kind of faith
because they accept the Christian truths. They
have faith that Christ is the Son of God or
that there is a heaven and a hell. Trusting
faith is faith in God’s goodness. When people
have trusting faith, they believe that
everything will turn out well. God will take
care of them because he loves them. Believing
faith and trusting faith are both important,
but they are not enough to see God’s glory.
The difference between just having believing
faith or trusting faith and having expectant
faith can be seen in the story of the woman
suffering from severe bleeding that is told in
Mark’s Gospel:
“Then Jesus started off. So many
people were going along with him that they
were crowding him from every side. There was
a woman who had suffered terribly from
severe bleeding for twelve years, even
though she had been treated by many doctors.
She had spent all her money, but instead of
getting better, she got worse all the time.
She had heard about Jesus, so she came in
the crowd behind him. ‘If I touch just his
clothes,’ she said to herself, ‘I shall get
well.’ She touched his cloak and her
bleeding stopped at once; and she had the
feeling inside herself that she was cured of
her trouble. At once Jesus felt that power
had gone out of him. So he turned around in
the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my
clothes?’ His disciples answered, ‘You see
that people are crowding you; why do you ask
who touched you?’ But Jesus kept looking
around to see who had done it. The woman
realized what had happened to her; so she
came, trembling with fear, and fell at his
feet and told him the whole truth. Jesus
said to her, ‘My daughter, your faith has
made you well; go in peace, and be healed
from your trouble.’” (Mark 5:24–34)
As
Jesus was walking through the crowds, the
woman suffering from severe bleeding came up
to him. She reached out to touch him, and when
she did, she was healed. It was her faith that
allowed her to be healed. But it was not just
believing faith that she had. When she reached
out to touch him she did not say, “This man is
the Son of God,” or, “this man is the Messiah,
and I want to touch him.” She might not have
even known who he was. All she knew was that
he had healed people. Nor was it just trusting
faith that she had. When she reached out to
him, she did not say, “This is a good man, a
man I can trust. He will see that whatever
happens to me is the best possible thing.”
Rather, she had expectant faith. She said, “If
I touch just his clothes, I shall get well.”
She did not just believe in who Jesus was, nor
did she just trust him, but she expected that
if she touched him in expectant faith, and
that, Jesus said, is what healed her.
Expecting
faith
The kind of faith which
makes it possible for us to see the glory of
God is expectant faith. God wants us to reach
out for many things, because we have a
confident expectation that he will do things
for us if we only turn to him. When we put
that kind of faith in him, things happen.
Expectant faith often means that we have to do
something before we see God act. A good
example of the active element in our faith is
Peter’s walking on the water. Peter saw Christ
walking across the lake, coming closer to
them. When Peter saw him, he asked Christ to
let him walk on the water. So Christ told him
to come, and he did. He stepped out of the
boat and began to walk.
In order for Peter to walk on water, he
actually had to walk. It may sound stupid to
say it that way, but Peter’s part was to walk,
and his part was indispensable. There would be
no walking on water unless Peter actually did
some walking. It was the power of Christ which
made it possible for the water to hold Peter
up, but the power of Christ could not do
everything. His power could be there, but if
Peter had never stepped out of the boat and
walked, there would have been no story to
tell.
In order to walk on the water, Peter needed
some expectant faith. He may not have needed a
lot, but he at least needed enough to take the
necessary step. Moreover, he not only had to
expect something to happen. He also had to do
something to make it possible. His expectant
faith had to lead to action. He had to act
upon what he knew Christ had said.
A response
to God's revelation
What is faith, then?
Faith is a response to God’s revelation. Once
God begins to show us something about what we
can expect from him, we need to respond to
that by believing it, counting on it, acting
upon it. As we begin to put expectant faith in
what God is showing us we begin to see things
happen.
This article is excerpted
from Growing
in Faith, copyright © 1972, 1980
by Stephen B. Clark, and published by Tabor House. Used with
permission.
Steve
Clark
is past president of the Sword
of
the Spirit and founder of The
Servants of the Word.
|
