What Is Faith All About?
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1
Imagine this: you’re standing at the top of the Leap of Faith at camp. If you haven’t been up to High Adventure in a while, that’s the telephone pole that you climb to the top of (strapped in!), and then stand on a platform until you jump off, reaching for the bar. Sounds crazy, right? Well, one girl’s “no way!” is another girl’s “when can I sign up?”
So you’re at the top, the counselors at the bottom are cheering you on, and you’re about to jump off and reach for the bar. Your knees may be a little shaky, but what are you putting your faith in at that moment? Are you thinking that holding on to the rope is going to save you? Of course not! You know that your ability to hold on to the rope is so much weaker than the rope’s ability to hold onto you. This is what the rope does - it holds. So all your faith in that moment is on the rope’s strength, not your own.
We throw around the word “faith” a lot, but it’s hard to really get what it means. This verse in Hebrews gives us a definition of sorts - faith is believing in something you cannot see with your own eyes. When we talk about faith, we use words like how “strong” it is, or that it is either something you have or don’t have. That’s not wrong at all, but there’s more to it. If everything comes down to how strong your faith in God is, that’s a lot of pressure!
Pastor Tim Keller said it well, “It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you.” Did you catch that? Being a Christian isn’t about how strong or weak your faith is, it’s about how strong our God is.
Sometimes we feel like we need to hold on to God with all our might, but the truth is, He is already holding on to us, and He will not let us go. Our confidence comes from knowing Him, that He is the strong rope holding on to us. The better we know Him and understand how faithful He is, the more our faith and trust in Him grows.