What is Faith? - Trust in god

The following teaching is possible thanks to the friends and partners of Spirit and Truth Fellowship International. As we study faith it's really comforting, when we finally really get that faith is just trust. And it's a simple word, and it's a common word, and you and I can trust God. Now, that doesn't mean that we'll necessarily trust God... deeply right when we start, but the good news about trust is... it grows. Sure! Any time you meet somebody, and you are not very sure about them, but you enter into a relationship with them, then, your trust will either grow, or it will fall apart, if they prove themselves to be untrustworthy. So trust, then, has a huge part to play in the Scripture, because God doesn't expect us to become righteous by our works, He expects us to become righteous by our faith, by our trust in Him. Now, let's read a little more about faith and faith-growing in the Scripture. And here, if we start in Romans, chapter 3, and we are going to start in 20: '...therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight... in His sight, by observing the Law.' And that means, by doing things. I don't care how good we try to be. And this is so comforting... because all of us sin, all of us make mistakes. That's why you can't be saved by your works, because no matter how perfect we try to be, and how close we can come, we can't really ever get there. Sooner or later we are going to make a mistake, something is going to happen... but we can always just trust God and say: 'Hey, 'me? I'm not very good, I make a lot of mistakes, but Him, God, I can trust Him'. And as soon as we say: 'I can trust God'... 'Me... you know, I make a lot of mistakes, but God I can trust, God I can love.' As soon as we do that, God up there goes: 'Well, someone trusts me.' And then He declares that person righteous. You see, we have trust in God and what he did through Jesus Christ. And that's exactly the message. Romans says: "no one will be declared righteous in His sight "by observing the Law, rather, through the Law, we become conscious of sin." Sure... yeah... it's when there is a regulation that all of a sudden I become aware of how hard it is to keep it, and how often I brake it. Verse 21: "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law..." apart from trying to be so good. This righteousness from God, apart from rules and regulations, "...has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify." "This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ." Sure. I trust the Jesus Christ died for me. I trust that his death covers my sin. I trust that God raised him up from the dead. I trust that God made him word, and Romans 10: 9, says... then, I'm saved. So, we go through Romans and we say... Well... I don't really have that trust yet, and... I know I ran into people, you may run into people and, you may be such a person that... you are saying: "Well, that's great, John, but... right now I don't trust in Jesus Christ for my salvation." Maybe that's because you don't know him well enough. Again, remember, trust grows, it's just... trust is trust, it's a simple concept, a common concept. We have trust in people we have a relationship with. And that was, one of the problems, actually, in the Book of Romans. We go to Romans, chapter 10, and here are the Jews, and Paul was trying to talk to the Jews, about Jesus Christ, and they didn't believe in Jesus, and so, here Paul writes in Romans 10: 1: "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved." "Saved", what does that mean? It's an interesting Christian word, "saved". It means, to be rescued, to be saved from death. The wages of sin is death, and... God doesn't want everybody to die, so he provided Jesus Christ so people could be "saved". Saved from death. Paul writes: "well... "the Jews haven't accepted Jesus yet, and my prayer to God is that they may be saved." And so Romans 10, then, is going to talk about how to get people to be saved, which they're going to be saved by trusting in Jesus. So Romans 10 is going to teach us about, how do we get... how do we trust? And here, in Romans, Chapter 10, verse 17, what we read... "Consequently, faith... trust... comes from hearing..." Yeah, that's one of the great ways that we get trust. One of the great ways that we trust is by hearing, we listen to people. And if we listen to God, and God is giving us His Word, He's written it down. It's not spoken, but it's written. It's... we get to know God, and then we can trust Him more. Absolutely. By the way, Both as a listener, to build fait, and as a teacher, to try to build faith in others, one of the thing is: if faith comes from hearing, then we got to make sure what we are hearing... I mean, what we are saying, makes sense. Absolutely. The fact that faith comes by hearing is one of the great reasons that it's so important that our Christian doctrine be right. Because, if people are going... People listen to Christian doctrine, and they trust or don't trust on the basis of whether that doctrine hits their hearts as trustworthy. Absolutely. I know, for example, I was unsaved for the first 18 or 19 years of my life. I was raised in a home that wasn't Christian. And one of the things I juts... I just couldn't get around was that God would take people and burn them in hell forever. And... you know, it was many, many years later when I learned in the Bible that God doesn't do that. You know, God doesn't' burn people forever. But that was just one of those teachings that... to me, it made God untrustworthy. Any God that could take a child that, say is killed by a car when he is five years old but his family wasn't Christian or he hadn't given his life to Christ, and so God is going to burn this child forever. That broke my trust. Anybody that behaves like that... I can't trust them. And so, it's important, if faith comes by hearing, that our doctrines be correct, and that's one of the reasons we at Spirit s to understand and then correctly teach the Word of God. Now, faith also comes from relationships. I have friends, you have friends... Some of my trust in them comes from what I hear, and some of my trust in them comes from being around them. And, as we mature in the Christian faith, you know, as we start out in the Christian faith, we are just hearing a lot about Christianity. As we become more and more committed to the Christian faith, you know... our faith will grow, our faith will build, it will deepen. We get into a relationship with God. We begin to see that, when we are in trouble, God will move and help us. And he helps us time after time after time. And, pretty soon it's like: "Yeah, I trust God." "I trust God because I hear him." "I trust God because of my relationship with Him." So the good news is that faith grows. If we are in a relationship with the Word of God, if we are in a relationship with other Christians, if we are in a walking talking relationship with God, and if we are trying to walk out our Christianity. Now, that brings up an interesting point: that if you are Christian and you don't find you faith growing, if your trust in God, and your trust in the Bible is not growing, then... hey, it's time to start asking questions. Because I would assert that if you have a good friend, if you stay in a relationship with that friend, the older that friendship gets, the deeper the trust becomes. And so, when you are staring out in Christianity, and all of the sudden you find that your trust in God has kind of peaked out, you are not trusting God any more deeply now than you did a while back, then we need to start asking questions, because... trust is trust, faith is trust, that's it, it's trust, and it grows as we are in a relationship, So, you know, one thing I say is: "Are you searching for truth or have you given up?" Because, if you continue to search for truth, God continues to reveal truth to you. That deepens your trust in God, sure. "Do you really believe God loves you?" Well, there's a lot of Christians that, honestly, don't believe God loves them. It's kind of paradoxical in some ways. I've run into a number of Christians that believe God loves everybody else, but to them, they're unlovable. They're like: "God couldn't love me." And... How can you trust somebody that doesn't love you? And then, it's incumbent on us, it's important for us to take the steps necessary to say: "I am going to work on my understanding God, and why he loves me, and why he loves people. Is there something in your doctrine or beliefs that keeps you from trusting God? This is important to understand. Is there something in your behavior that's blocking your faith? Remember that Hebrews teaches us without faith it's impossible to please God. Our faith ought to be deepening throughout our lives, and it will if we are doing things rightly with the Word of God. How to become a Christian - Romans 10:9 & 10 What does the Bible say about Suffering? Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe on iTunes and YouTube Subtitles by www.TrueSubtitles.com.ar