The Nature of Faith

Hebrews 11:1

Hebrews 11:1 is a "real" verse! Faith is a substance, or something solid and that you can touch. It is real, it is something with a foundation, something which has actual existence. There is evidence to prove its existence.

What is faith? You cannot have faith without having a Bible verse for faith. This separates a lot of things about what people say is faith and what faith really is. This is true because faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Oral Roberts didn't have faith when he asked for 74 million dollars. There is no word of God in the Bible concerning this, nor is there a promise in the Bible about this sort of thing.

For example: a lost person knows they are lost and are going to hell. Why? Because there are Bible verses that teach this is so. Therefore a lost person believes the Bible verses, knowing they apply to them, therefore they are know the Bible is true. When that same lost person is saved, how are they saved? By trusting what the Bible says about coming to Christ and believing in Him for eternal life.

John 3:16 - The lost can have faith in this verse, because God said it, and Jesus makes it so. This passage is talking about the way to salvation, and the way of eternal life. We believe Jesus came because the Bible says so. It doesn't make any difference whether I believe it is so, or whether I "feel" it is so. The truth is written in the Bible, and the truth is what counts. Believing what the Bible says is exercising faith.

I was saved when I was 12 years old, but my best friend told me I wasn't supposed to be telling people about how to be saved, or what God could do for them. So I quit studying and learning what God wanted me to live and know. Some Church of Christ people told me I could lose my salvation, and I had a lot of trouble with that saying. I was raised in a Baptist church, and was taught from my youth about eternal security. But I couldn't find a verse in the entire Bible that taught security of the believer. Once I was teaching about baptism, and I asked for a verse that said we ought to be put under the water in order to be baptized. One fellow said he didn't know where it was at, but the Bible did say somewhere "buried with him in baptism". The point is, we need to know where the Bible says we are to be buried with him in baptism. John 3:16 teaches about eternal life, not temporary life. Almost every saved person has come to the place that they don't feel they are saved. That is because every person must come to the point of faith in believing that Christ has saved them for all eternity.


Acting on what the Bible says is the next part of faith.

When we believe the promise of God, or the Word of God, it will do something inside you. It will "turn up"! Faith is on the inside, but action is on the outside. Faith is in the heart, but our action will be in our bodies. Our actions will be based on what we have on the inside.

Heb. 11:3 - We believe God created the world in 6-24 hour days. We understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. We understand, not we "feel". We will not believe any form of evolution because we have faith in believing what God said in the book of Genesis about creation. Real faith in what God's Word says is impossible to keep inside you. It will get out of your heart, and into your life, and you won't be able to stop it, or get it going.

By an internal belief in what God says, Abel offered a more suitable sacrifice than Cain. Able offered the blood sacrifice because he believed what God said, and worked this out in his life. Cain didn't believe in his heart, therefore, he brought an offering of the fruit of his own hands. True faith will cause you to act in your body according to what you believe in your heart.

Faith is not some kind of cloudy, misty, dreamy sort of nothingness. You can touch faith because you can touch the scriptures. If you don't know what God said, you won't have any faith. If you know some of the promises of God, you can have faith in those promises. Take the promise of eternal security, and the next time you don't feel saved, you can take hold of that promise of God, and you can say, I know I am saved, I just don't feel like it! Then you won't feel so bad! You see, it's all right if you don't feel really good, or if you don't feel so hot. Believing the promises of God makes everything okay.

This thought will do away with all our little personality quirks, and all the doubts and troubles we go through. Our hearts desire is to be very pleasing to God, and when we don't have faith, we will be very disappointed in ourselves. So we don't have to be disappointed in ourselves any more. We just believe the promises of God which He has outlined in his Bible and we will please God.

If we have faith, we can say to a mountain, go to the sea. But if we don't have a Bible verse, we won't have any faith.


Promises are very good. When God makes a promise He will never fail us. When man makes a promise, he may fail, but God never will.

Hebrews 11:7 - The very first thing this passage says about Noah is that he believed the Word of God, and acted on his belief. This is true for us. When we really believe the Word of God, we will act on it.

A very crude illustration: Your doctor says you need an operation. Do you believe him.? It is according to how much you trust him. Some doctors I will not believe because I don't have any trust in that doctor. But there are other doctors that would tell me I needed an operation, and I would believe him because I trust him. Listen: Do you believe God when He says the lost are going to go to hell when they die? If you really believe God, you will act on that belief and come to Him that you might have everlasting life.

The Bible says Noah moved with fear because he believed what God told him. Will you move with fear toward God who has told you that all who are lost will go to hell?

I hope this message has done one thing. It has shown you that real faith is not mystical, but is simply believing what God said. It is not looking at circumstances, it is looking to God.