What is Faith?

(Originally posted July 28, 2008)

What is faith? We put a lot of stock in it, without talking about it very much.

It's not always what we think it is.
Faith is NOT knowing everything there is to know about God (impossible)
Faith is NOT coming to church on Sunday mornings (it's so much more...)
Faith is NOT just saying you believe in something you can't see (though, most times it will include that)

Here's a good quote I read this morning on faith:

We always see through a glass darkly, and that is what faith is about. I will live by the best I can discern today. Tomorrow I may find out I was wrong. The God revealed in Jesus whom I call the Christ is a God whose forgiveness goes ahead of me, and whose love sustains me and the whole created world. That God bursts all the definitions of our small minds, all the limitations of our timid efforts, all the boundaries of our institutions. ~ Verna Dozier

She also says, and this is the part I really like, "Biblical faith is not intellectual assent to a proposition. It is risking that God is worthy of trust."

We don't have God all figured out, never will. So instead, faith is about trusting that God's ways are good ways (the best ways), that God is for us and not against us, even when all evidence is to the contrary, even when everything is on the line... especially when everything is on the line.

Faith is risky business, by its very nature. We take the risk that today, based on who I understand God to be, God is calling me to do X (and let me tell you, "X" is very rarely the easiest or most fun thing to do). Take a risk today.