But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. - Hebrews 11:6
This past Memorial Day Weekend I was at my mother’s house in Massachusetts. My mom wanted to make us something special for breakfast so she whipped up some blueberry muffins for my family and I. The muffins looked perfect, but when you bit into them something was clearly missing. In her haste to make the muffins, my mom had left out the critical ingredient of sugar. The muffins didn’t taste bad just not as the recipe intended.
In the Christian life one of the most critical ingredients is faith. For our Christian life to be as God intended we must live as people of faith. Without faith, as the above text indicates, we can’t please God. In addition, it is through faith that we are actually saved according to Ephesians 2:8-9 which states “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” In fact, all of the Christian life is lived by faith and not by sight, as we are told in
2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
Regretfully for many of us, faith (authentic submission and dependence on God), is often missing in our Christian walk. We recognize that we couldn’t save ourselves and thus we cried out to the Lord to rescue us. We now, however, think or believe that we can pull off the Christian life with a minimal amount of help from God.
The importance of faith to our everyday walk cannot be overstated. Hebrews 4:2 warns us of the danger of hearing the promises of God and not applying them by faith when it says, “For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.” It is possible for us to know the wonderful promises of God and yet not benefit from them because we don’t mix them with faith.
Most super-strong glues come with two tubes in the package. The two solutions need to be mixed together to obtain a bond. One of those tubes has a strong adhesive in it. Unless it is in the compund the mixture won’t stick. In many ways faith is the adhesive, the epoxy that allows the promises of God to stick to us. If we don’t mix the promises of God with faith they are of no benefit to us.
Faith is so important to our Christian experience we can’t afford to neglect it. Beginning Sunday June 6th and continuing throughout the summer months we will be talking about faith from the book of Hebrews chapters 11 and 12. We invite our members and friends in the coming weeks to “Come Soar with Us” as we learn to fly on the wings of faith”. It is our hope and prayer that we as church family will have a faith-filled summer.
Blessings,
Dave Watson
An Urban Christian
