Have you thought about the word “faith” lately? It’s something we exercise everyday even though we cannot see it with our naked eyes. By faith we sit upon a chair, hoping that it will hold us and not fall apart. By faith we get in our cars, turn on the ignition, and hope that the combination of gasoline and pistons will roar to life and take us where we want to go. But, then, can we “see” faith? No, faith is not something we can see standing before us, but we can see its actions. Faith is nothing we can hold in our hands but it’s real just the same. Well, if we can’t see it or hold it, then how do we define it? The best place for us to turn is not to Webster’s Dictionary, but to the book that he regularly read while he was alive and that book was the Bible.
The writer of Hebrews, the eleventh chapter, which we call “The Hall of Faith” because it gives so many examples of people who “walked by faith”, gives the definition of “faith” in the very first verse. Verse one says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I like that word “now”, don’t you? It’s not talking about something in the future, it’s not talking about something in the past, but it’s talking about something that is “in the here and now”, “right this very moment”. Today, in the moment that you live, you can exercise faith. You don’t have to wait to exercise it, you don’t have to get anyone’s permission, it’s yours to exercise in the “here and now”. Wherever you are in life, in whatever station you are in, in whatever condition you find yourself, you can exercise faith!
However, let’s go on and examine the rest of that definition. It’s “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Well, now, what does that mean? Perhaps we can turn our attention to a few other translations of the Bible. Two versions that I like the most are the more modern versions of the Bible, “The New Living Translation”, and “The Living Bible, Paraphrased”. I like them for their ease of reading and their simplicity of understanding. Actually, the “Living Bible Translation” came out before the “New Living Translation”. One was one man’s interpretation and the other was the work of many scholars on the various books of the Bible. Both are excellent. The New Living Translation defines faith (this very verse) in this way. “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.” This version adds, “confident assurance” and “evidence that we cannot yet see” (yet we expect to see it soon.) But the translation that spurned the New Living Translation, The Living Bible Translation, puts the verse this way; “What is faith? It is the confident assurance (there’s that word confidence again) that something we want is going to happen (like it’s already there). It is the certainty (not the guesswork) that what we hope for, is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead.” I call this translation “The I Know, Translation” because it says, “I know that I know that I know that what I hope for is going to happen, even though I cannot see it right now, but it’s going to happen and it’s going to happen soon!” Do you like that one? Now it may not be a million dollars that you are going to get, but it can mean that you are going to get a million blessings!
