What does it mean to have faith in God?

Asking for a Friend | Week 2

Dave Brown explores what faith is and isn't as it pertains to having faith in God.


MESSAGE NOTES

What does it mean to have faith in God?
Asking for a Friend • January 15, 2023
Teacher: Dave Brown

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Hebrews 11:1, 13-16a NIV

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.

Faith is not about being right.

We shouldn’t use legalism as our primary approach to evangelism.

Romans 2:17-24 NIV

If you rely on the law and boast in God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

Faith is not about knowing all the right information.

Faith is about developing a relationship with God.

1 John 3:1 NIV

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

Michael Reeves

The very nature of God is to be affectionate, joyful, and bountiful; the Father rejoices to have another beside him, and he find his very self in pouring out his love. Creation is about the spreading, the diffusion, the outward explosion of that love. This God is the very opposite of greedy, hungry, selfish emptiness; in his self-giving he naturally pours forth life and goodness. He is, then, the source of all that is good…Goodness and ultimate happiness are to be found with him, not apart from him.

Faith is about living a life transformed by our relationship with God

Karl Barth

The truth of Jesus Christ is not one truth among others; it is the truth, the universal truth that creates all truth as surely as it is the truth of God, the first truth which is also the ultimate truth. For in Jesus Christ God has created all things, He has created all of us. We exist not apart from Him, but in Him, whether we are aware of it or not; and the whole cosmos exists not apart from Him, but in Him, born by Him, the Almighty Word.

1. We have a heavenly Father that loves us more perfectly than we could ever know or comprehend.
2. My response to his love should be to love him back,
3. To proclaim his love to anyone that will listen to me,
4. And to do my best to live according to his truth as expressed in the Bible.

Faith means having confidence in the promise of God.

Revelation 21:1-4 NIV

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”