Building A Foundation Of Faith – Part 3

The Building Materials for the Glorious Church – Part 3

THE SOUND DOCTRINE OF JESUS CHRIST CONT’D.

Welcome back to the study on the Elementary (Foundational) Principles of the sound doctrine of Jesus Christ. To become mature in the Body of Christ and walk in Sonship, it is important to learn, understand, and master the elementary principles we are studying in this series. Each principle builds upon another and there is a divine order to God’s plan for humanity. Each of these elementary principles are jointly fitted together for a strong and sturdy foundation in your walk.

He says, “For when for the time you ought to be teachers, you have need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For every one who only partakes of milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to them that are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.” “Therefore leaving the discussion of the elementary principles (of the doctrine) of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permits.” (Hebrews 5:12-6:3)

FAITH

The second of these six elementary foundations is “Faith Toward God”.

What we’ve been told about faith is a very limited view of faith and the limited view has caused you to isolate faith to certain particular usages, such as faith for health, faith for wealth, faith for things and possessions. It’s understandable why God allowed the message of faith to be associated with these things because when you are immature, these are what you think about. When you are young in the Lord, your desire is for God to do something for you. This is okay…when we are babes.

We must realize that there are many stages in our growing up in God because our relationship to God, as the children of God, is referred to in Scripture in multiple sequences. We begin with being born again, (Birth, nativity, babes desiring spiritual milk). As we continue to grow, so must our Faith continue to grow. As teenagers (young men, young women), we become stronger in the word and faith; and, as mature believers, we now have a real relationship with God the Father, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. We become sons of God and walk in Sonship with Him. We don’t sweat the small things in life because we have now moved on the things of the Kingdom of God.

1 John 5:12-14
Their Spiritual State
I write to you, little children, Because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.   I write to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men, Because you have overcome the wicked one.
I write to you, little children, Because you have known the Father.
I have written to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
I have written to you, young men, Because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you,
And you have overcome the wicked one.

How does your faith toward God grow up? One of the areas in which your faith in God is meant to grow up, is that you begin to understand that the Living God lives in you and intends to live through you. I repeat: “The Living God intends to live in you and live through you.”

Jesus spoke of this to those around him: “Jesus gave them this answer: ‘I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.’” – (John 5:19) —when He says that, He is declaring His faith in God as a way of life. That is, that He has entrusted Himself to God so completely, that whatever God elects to do through Him, Jesus is willing to permit. Growing up in faith requires a trust in God, not just for how your life might be preserved and enriched, but it requires that you believe that God is better able to direct the entirety of your life than you are.

Faith therefore, must mature from what God can do for you, how God can supply you, and how God can preserve your health. It must grow from that to your complete trust in God. Growing up is that you come to the realization that God has a plan for your life, which is how He, himself, envisioned that He would live in time and space through your person, through your body.

We then can claim to be the body of Christ. It’s our bodies, yes, but we have given Him our bodies and He now can live through these human vessels to do through them what He specifically designed us to do and to be, in terms of His ability to use us for His eternal purposes known in His mind before the foundations of the world.

What is the definition of faith, and specifically faith toward God?

The writer of the book of Hebrews states it in chapter 11, verse 1. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it (Faith) the elders obtained a good testimony.” (Hebrews 11:1-2)

So when it says, “Faith is the substance (being sure) of things hoped for, and Faith is the evidence (certainty) of things not seen.” then what it means is that there is an entire world and entire existence apart from what can be seen.

“By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11:3)

Beloved, Faith is your encounter—in a routine way through all of the stages of your life—with the reality that though you cannot see it, you’ve bumped into the evidence of its existence again and again and again. The evidence is meant to cause you to rely on the reality of the thing that you cannot see, based upon your contact with it. We have not seen the Kingdom of God. You cannot say, “Look here the Kingdom; look there the Kingdom”, because the Kingdom is within you and the Kingdom is invisible.

What evidence do you have that the Kingdom exists? The fact is that God continuously bombards you with the evidence that, though it is unseen, it is real. You see the Kingdom of God in terms of “the goodness of God and his grace in your life.” So the Scriptures say, “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have believed.” —“Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’” – John 20:29)

What God wants from the believer is to grow from those early rudimentary encounters with God’s goodness—the parking space that you got in front of the crowded restaurant, or the occasion that somebody called you at the moment that you were thinking about him or her—if you do not allow these things to develop in you and to become a body of evidence, then you have to learn again and again, the same thing. Though it may seem foolish and/or redundant, when God is teaching you faith, He teaches you faith in a manner that you can understand.

Life Application Example: So what if God then tells you something, but it is not coming to pass yet? Was it years ago, months ago, weeks ago? What should be your reaction? Well, you’ve seen the goodness of God here and you’ve seen the goodness of God there; and, if that is true and there is a consistency in your life—in all the stages of your life—then when God has told you something, but you are waiting for its fulfillment, what should you be thinking about? Should you be waiting nervously? Should you be waiting as if it is not going to happen? No! You should be setting your plans as if what God told you has already come to pass and you’re setting your plans to receive it, to accommodate to it, and to manage and steward it as the Holy Spirit would give you direction. At that junction then, not only do you have evidence of God’s previous dealings with you as the foundation of your belief, but now there is a different element that has been introduced and that element is: the certainty that you can act in anticipation of what God has told you.

Remember, beloved, Faith is an elementary foundational doctrine to grow in Christ. Make sure you understand this clearly. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it (Faith) the elders obtained a good testimony.” (Hebrews 11:1-2)

We’ve just read about “the evidence of things not seen”. Faith is also the substance of things hoped for. At this point, hope then is not a “wish”. Hope is: that consistent conformity with what God has previously declared to you, you are basing your actions for the future.

Hope is certainty, hope is security, hope has no element of uncertainty to it!

Hope means that God, who has given you the substantive (concrete) awareness of His substantive promise and has always been faithful in His promises. when the thing that He has now substantively promised you is waiting to be fulfilled, you don’t act as if it’s not going to. Because your hope is not a wish that it would happen, but the certainty that this future, too, will be as certain to you as every other thing that God substantively brought forth having previously promised it to you.

You then begin to understand that the way God deals with you is that He first promises, then you must wait, because there is the element of His timing—for all the reasons that His timing work: to bring things into alignment, to work things in you, to work things in others, to prepare all manner of things. So while the thing is waiting, it is not as if it is not going to happen. You therefore wait in the certainty that it’s going to happen and you allow the work that needs to be done in you, to be done in you to prepare you to be able to receive that which is coming forth in the timing of the Lord with the certainty of all the previous promises that God has made to you and fulfilled to you, with a rigorous regimen that has been unfailing throughout the course of your life.

The Hebrew definition of Hope:

Tikvah

In English, hope is a somewhat abstract idea of expectation. The word for hope in Hebrew (Tikvah), however, is more concrete. In Hebrew, the word means expectation—and it also means cord or rope, which comes from a root word that means to bind or to wait for or upon.

I’ll leave you with the below scriptures from Hebrews 4:1-2 (Note: Hebrews is the book of Faith and I encourage you to read and study it as well.)

“Therefore, since a promise remains of entering into His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us and well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.”

I pray you will really take the time to study this principle and do a self-exam of all the areas of your life you have seen the thumbprints of Yahweh in, around, and through you life. Thank you for joining me on this journey and I hope your faith will grow. Blessings.

Norma Umphress