Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The Substance of things hoped for

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Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen............Hebrews 11:1

I am an optimistic person. I always have been. Optimism seems to come easily to a person who has  the gift of FAITH.
Even when times were at their darkest for me, I always beleived that God was going to pull me through, and He always has.  I've always had enough money. I've always been healed. I've been given more blessings than I could ever know about let alone count.
So I would say that my "faith" is pretty big! And it stands to reason, because we have a Great Big God in which to have faith in!
For many others though, faith does not come so easily. Faith is something that has to be worked on and grown, because for those individuals with a logical brain, faith has no substance.

My wonderful husband is one of these people. Although he loves God very much, and believes He is there, he has a difficult time believing that such an amazing being would be interested in our problems, our headaches, our struggles....
And he also needs something that he can SEE.

The dictionary defines Faith as a confidence or trust or belief in God. It defines substance as "that of which a thing consists, or physical matter" or "concrete ness"
It defines hope as "a feeling of trust, anticipate, or an expectation and desire for something.

I happen to like the Bible definition the best, which according to Webster would translate as,  "Faith is the concrete physical matter of our expectations and desires for that thing we anticipate from God"
Pretty cool right???
Now, Matthew 17:20 says that if we have faith as small as a mustard seed, and this is teeny tiny, we can move mountains. I remember when I was a little girl and I heard this scripture for the first time. I was riding in the back seat of our family station wagon and I literally looked over at what I considered to be a mountain and told it to move!!!!
Well it didn't. Lol. But in my child's mind I was taking this scripture very literally. It didn't shake my faith though, and as I grew and matured I realized that God probably did not intend our faith to be used for landscaping. Instead, the mountains of depression, discouragement, anger, oppression, and unforgiveness, just to name a few, could be removed with just a little faith.

Imagine what we could do with faith the size of a football!
That same scripture goes on to say that "nothing will be impossible for you!"

I don't know about you, but to me that sounds pretty substantial.

How big is the substance of your faith? Do you have at least a mustard seed? What are you hoping for today?

Please leave a comment, I would be happy to pray for you!!







3 comments:

  1. Another great encouragement Renae! Very well written as always!

    Love, Heidi - aka "Michelle Fye" LOL!!

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  2. Good word! as always :p the women in our family have always had a lot of faith!

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