What Is Faith? (AGW)
WHAT IS FAITH?
Dr. James I. Packer, in his book God’s Words, says “The popular idea of faith is of a certain obstinate optimism: the hope, tenaciously held in face of trouble, that the universe is fundamentally friendly and things may get better.”
I would have had to be an optimist of the most incorrigible obstinacy to have held on to that sort of faith in the dark times of my own life. It has been another faith that has sustained me—faith in the God of the Bible, a God, as someone once put it, not small enough to be understood but big enough to be worshiped.
If we believe that God is God, our faith is not a deduction from the facts around us. It is not an instinct. It is not inferred from the happy way things work. Faith is a gift from God, and we must respond to Him with a decision: The God of the universe has spoken, we believe what He says, and we will obey. We must make a decision that we will hold in the face of all opposition and apparent contradiction.
The powers of hell can never prevail against the soul that takes its stand on God and on His Word. This kind of faith overcomes the world. The world of today must be shown. We (you and I) must show people what Jesus showed the world on that dark day so long ago—that we love the Father and will do what He says.