Thursday, November 13, 2008

Hebrews 11

IDEA: Faith is a commitment to a promise and to the acts of God.

PURPOSE: To help listeners see what it means and does not mean to live by faith.

Would you agree that the writer of the letter to the Hebrews insists that "the Christian life is a life of faith"?

I. Can you understand why that assertion makes many people uneasy with Christians?

That comment assumes at least:

Instead of being rational and reasonable and using common sense, you are always talking about "faith."

Isn't faith "believing what you know is not true"? Or at least other people know it's not true. Aren't you talking about faith in spite of the evidence?

At its core, isn't faith as the basis of your life irrational? Look at all the strange and stupid things people do because of "faith."

If all the people you read about in Hebrews 11 had such great faith, why did they often betray it by the way they acted?

Can you have consistency in your life and say you still have "faith"?

Can you break your own standards and still be a person of faith?

II. Faith is staking your life on the reality that God exists and that God has made promises to us and will act to keep those promises.

Faith is staking your life on God's Word.

Can you have faith and not possess absolute certainty? Every great choice in life is taken short of absolute certainty.