Seeing is believing, are we sure?
Today's blog is once again on faith, what is faith and just how do we exercise our faith?
I have a confession to make, I love fantasy movies especially well written and well acted kids fantasy's and "Voyage of the Unicorn" is one of the best I have seen in some time. I will not give a movie review here but I am mentioning it because there were two phrases used throughout the movie, lessons if you will, for the father and his two daughters that were the main characters of the film. Those two phrases are very important in the real life walk of the believer. They are:
" You have to believe to see" and "Faith comes before the miracle"
Consider this passage in light of the first statement, "1Co_2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Does this not say you must believe in order to see? The natural man is not a believer and therefore cannot "see" (receive) the things of the Spirit.
How many times have you witnessed to a person and they simply could not understand what you were saying. In fact in my experience they act as if you are speaking a foreign language or worse they see you as dumb and accepting fables as truth. But, if you are a believer it is so easy to see the wonderful works of God. We see the sun set, the geese flying in formation, the clouds, the majesty of the mountains, the beauty of a waterfall, the lovely peaceful quite of the forest and much, much, more. What does the unbeliever see? The evil works of men and they blame the God they do not believe in, wow. The unbeliever says things like," if God is so powerful and loving why is there evil in the world?" They will not accept the truth that the evil is of our doing and they think God, if He exists, should take our free will from us and not allow us to choose evil, they can not see how it is loving to allow evil, you must be a believer to see that. The unbeliever believes all of nature can be explained without God but at some point, especially when you speak of origin, the unbelievers faith in fables becomes clear to all but himself. One must believe in order to see.
The next statement that was repeated through out the movie was," faith comes before the miracle".
How many times did Jesus say, " your faith has made you whole"? I don't know, I never counted them but it is a lot. So again I ask the question what is faith and again I answer it is a verb. Faith is an action taken on a belief.
"Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith then must come first and it is an action. For an example the woman with the issue of blood, (Matt 9:20-22) her faith was in the action that she took to touch the hem of the masters cloak.. In the passage from Hebrews we see faith is called the "substance". Substance is something that can be seen, it is Something real, not imaginary; something solid, not empty. Belief that something is, does not require you to act, faith demands action. The hard part is knowing what that action should be, which is where prayer comes in and having the belief that God will answer, I have written a book on that subject called Yahweh the God who Speaks and How to hear Him.
I have also written a book that you may find helpful in understanding faith called Saint Thomas's Guide to Faith.
You can check out all of my books at Books by Leslie R Auger
Thank-you.
Today's blog is once again on faith, what is faith and just how do we exercise our faith?
I have a confession to make, I love fantasy movies especially well written and well acted kids fantasy's and "Voyage of the Unicorn" is one of the best I have seen in some time. I will not give a movie review here but I am mentioning it because there were two phrases used throughout the movie, lessons if you will, for the father and his two daughters that were the main characters of the film. Those two phrases are very important in the real life walk of the believer. They are:
" You have to believe to see" and "Faith comes before the miracle"
Consider this passage in light of the first statement, "1Co_2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Does this not say you must believe in order to see? The natural man is not a believer and therefore cannot "see" (receive) the things of the Spirit.
How many times have you witnessed to a person and they simply could not understand what you were saying. In fact in my experience they act as if you are speaking a foreign language or worse they see you as dumb and accepting fables as truth. But, if you are a believer it is so easy to see the wonderful works of God. We see the sun set, the geese flying in formation, the clouds, the majesty of the mountains, the beauty of a waterfall, the lovely peaceful quite of the forest and much, much, more. What does the unbeliever see? The evil works of men and they blame the God they do not believe in, wow. The unbeliever says things like," if God is so powerful and loving why is there evil in the world?" They will not accept the truth that the evil is of our doing and they think God, if He exists, should take our free will from us and not allow us to choose evil, they can not see how it is loving to allow evil, you must be a believer to see that. The unbeliever believes all of nature can be explained without God but at some point, especially when you speak of origin, the unbelievers faith in fables becomes clear to all but himself. One must believe in order to see.
The next statement that was repeated through out the movie was," faith comes before the miracle".
How many times did Jesus say, " your faith has made you whole"? I don't know, I never counted them but it is a lot. So again I ask the question what is faith and again I answer it is a verb. Faith is an action taken on a belief.
"Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith then must come first and it is an action. For an example the woman with the issue of blood, (Matt 9:20-22) her faith was in the action that she took to touch the hem of the masters cloak.. In the passage from Hebrews we see faith is called the "substance". Substance is something that can be seen, it is Something real, not imaginary; something solid, not empty. Belief that something is, does not require you to act, faith demands action. The hard part is knowing what that action should be, which is where prayer comes in and having the belief that God will answer, I have written a book on that subject called Yahweh the God who Speaks and How to hear Him.
I have also written a book that you may find helpful in understanding faith called Saint Thomas's Guide to Faith.
You can check out all of my books at Books by Leslie R Auger
Thank-you.
RSS Feed
