Journey In Faith

For those who had noticed, the tagline I used in my last 2 blog entry was “In God We Trust and in Christ alone my hope is found”

It has been a while now since I had added Hebrews 11:1 as my tag-verse having seen the goodness of God and received the assurance that he had given me. Quite a number of weeks ago, Josie’s second sister also shared about her study of Hebrews 11 but her reading included verse 6 that says “And without faith it is impossible to please Him,..”

Hebrew 11:1 (NASB)

¹ Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:6 (NASB)

⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Today, I noticed too that Hebrews 11:2 says “For by it the men of old gained approval.” (NASB)

There are 2 parts to what I wished to share in today’s entry and the first part is about faith and hope. What I had not realised back then when I first included Hebrews 11:1 as my tag-verse was that I had focused so much on the part about “faith” and “trust” that I had missed the part in the same verse about the “assurance of the things hoped for,..”. I had written much about hope; of my hope in Christ but I had not really link the matter of faith with hope except when I quote Brother Lawrence’s words in “By Faith Give All to Gain All” posted on 5 March 2013. I had said before that you cannot dissociate “Trust” from “Faith” or vice versa for they are integral because we cannot trust God but have no faith or to have faith in God but no trust in Him. In so saying, out of faith and trust derives hope because faith gave substance to hope. It is because of faith that there is hope and it is also because of hope that faith is strengthened.

Concerning Verse 2 and Verse 6 of Hebrews 11 and this is the second part of my sharing. Suffice to say that these 2 verses spoke of gaining approval and pleasing God. Why I had grossed over these 2 verses was because I had not come to believe in God, to have faith in him just so that I can please Him or seek His approval. My faith in God was regardless of whether I gained His approval or seeking to please Him. I do realise that this is a very dangerous statement to make because it can very easily be misconstrued and just to clarify; it does not mean that I do not seek His approval nor try not to please Him. On the contrary, by having faith in God, it also means that in everything that I do, I seek to please Him and also sought after His approval. It is again one of those situations where having faith in God, pleasing Him and seeking His approval goes hand in hand and one is not independent of the others. By Faith we believe and if we believe in God and who He is, aren’t we then bound to the desire to want please Him as God and as Sovereign? Also, if we seek to please Him and believe in His sovereignty, then needless to say we too seek to gain His approval as a son would of his father or a subject his king.

Therefore, in using the tagline “In God We Trust and in Christ alone my hope is found”, I am also declaring that I seek after Him, after His approval and also to please Him.

  

This leads me to the final 2 verses of Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11:39-40 “³⁹ And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, ⁴⁰ because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.” (NASB)

Verse 39 hits me with a sort of a bang as it says “…did not receive what was promised…” If you read through the whole of Hebrews chapter 11, the word “promised” meant different things for the different people given as examples of their faith in God. In my reading, I had felt that God was speaking to me in this verse as if saying “David, you have not received what was promised but I am providing something better for you.” What this promise is that I am missing out on I do not know and but I know the “better” thing that God had provided in Christ His Son and to expand it further, when Christ ascended, He sent the Holy Spirit who will strengthen and comfort me and if the Spirit be willing, my healing.

It is thus that I pray the prayer in 1 Kings 8:57-59 but I had taken the liberty of changing the plural into singular and so prayed “⁵⁷ May the Lord my (our) God be with me (us), as He was with my (our) fathers (spiritual); may He not leave me (us) or forsake me (us), ⁵⁸ that He may incline my (our) heart(s) to Himself, to walk in all His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances, which He commanded my (our) fathers (spiritual). ⁵⁹ And may these words of mine, with which I have made supplication before the Lord, be near to the Lord my (our) God day and night, that He may maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day requires,..”

In God We Trust and in Christ alone my hope is found.

Hebrews 11:1