Bible Study: What is Faith and Why Should it Matter to Christians?

Welcome to episode 325. This is going to be a specific Bible study on what is faith and why it should matter to Christians. This is important information because we're going to dive into what Jesus said and why I'm even talking about this. But before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, if you're a frequent flyer here, you know that I'm a fanatic. You know that I love studying the Bible. We get the Bible into us so that we can take on this world. It is a battle to the death. Why I love Revelation 12:11: And they overcame him, which is the punk, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. None of us are going to get out of this thing alive, so why not fight for God? Why not put up a fight for the one true God, the holy God, Father God, Jesus his Son, and the Holy Spirit who is here right now with you and I. We have to put up a fight against the punk. Satan's not going to fight himself. Let's just kick his teeth in. Let's hit him in the mouth. I'm sick of him. I hate him. He hates me, so we're just going to hate him right back. Now, when I started to talk about what is faith and why we should even care, I read a chilling Bible verse before I even started this study. And it really triggered me, and it got me involved in answering this question: what is faith? I want to read you these two Bible verses, but I want you to concentrate on the last part of the second verse. But just to give it a little context, Jesus was talking about this judge that did not fear God nor man. This widow woman said, look, I need you to avenge me. I need you to— my adversary, I'm going to call the punk We got this punk just beating up on this widow woman, and this widow woman comes to this judge and says, I need some help. And this judge does not fear God nor man. He don't care. But he answers this lady because she just keeps on it, and she just keeps after it, and she just keeps after it. And that's where I am. We're at episode 325, and you can't do that by accident. You have just got to continue just to jump through this thing. Every Tuesday, every Thursday, I'm putting out new content, and this is on purpose. This is methodical. I am not going to let up because God gave me this ability. He put me in this country where I can still have some freedom of speech. Now, you may or may not see me or hear me, but I know I'm doing it. I'm putting this stuff out here so that my listeners, my followers, The people that love Jesus and love the word of God have something to anchor on to. They have something to get excited about, and it's the word of God. I'm telling you, it's not me. I'm just an ordinary Bubba who serves an extraordinary God, and it is wonderful to be here. I thank you for being a part of this, but let's get to these scriptures. And the scriptures that I'm talking about is in Luke 18:7 and 8. If you want to go back to 18:1, it starts talking about this parable that Jesus was talking about, but I want to pick it up at the end. And shall God not avenge his own elect who cry out day and night to him? Though he bears long with them, I tell you, he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth? And that just stopped me, and I know I've talked about this before. But when something I read in the Bible just stops me, that's what I do. I just stop, and it's like, wow, that's something. And so then I just stay there for a little bit, and I just ponder it, and I just think about it. We don't have to read the Bible in 365 days. We don't have to get from COVID to cover. We can get a little bit of Bible in us and plant it deep. And that's what I'm talking about. We need to get these seeds in us the incorruptible seed, the incorruptible seed that's the word of God. And we need to get it inside of us. And the only way to do that is to plant it and then to water it and then to nurture it and then to put some more stuff on it and to meditate on it and dig it around. And that's what I'm doing here. And that's why I'm talking about faith, because faith is such an important topic. And we're going to go to 1 Corinthians 13. Now that's the love chapter. But again, let's see how it ends. 1 Corinthians 13:13, "And now abide faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." And if you remember way back at 1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love. So I believe that that's the biggest reason why that the greatest of these is love and why Paul says the greatest of these is love is because God is love. Love isn't something that God does. Love is God. So when someone acts in love, they are acting as God would act. And that's what we need to get a hold of, that God is love. And love is patient, love is kind. I'm not going to go through all that in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 where Paul talks about what love is. But love is God. And if we see God as love, then it's going to make us want to be more like God. We— if we can love one another— and this isn't about love, this is about faith. But I want you to see in 1 Corinthians 13:13, it says, now these remain, or now these abide: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. These three are going to remain. So if we're going to concentrate on three things in the Bible, why wouldn't we concentrate on faith, hope, and love? Because Jesus is love. Jesus is God. Jesus is also the Word. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Remember that. And so we are in the Bible to spend time with the Word, with God, with Jesus. He is the truth. We can ramble on as long as you want, but this is important. And while we're talking about abiding, we have to go to John 8:31 and 32 when he was talking to his Jews that were following him. And in 8:31, then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And remember, in Romans 10:17, we're going to talk about this a lot. When you talk about faith, we know what faith is. That's in Hebrews 11:1. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We know what faith is, but how does faith come about? Faith has laws. We're going to talk about that. Faith is a huge, huge topic. But if we get a hold of faith, we get a hold of these three things that remain. We're going to talk about faith, we're going to talk about hope, we're going to talk about love on these podcast episodes. But right now we're concentrating on faith. And if we can get a hold of faith, we know that we've got a third of this Bible licked. In fact, when Jesus said on these two things hang all the law and the prophets. Jesus told the people that were listening to him to love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your spirit, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two hang all of the law and the prophets. So instead of reading the Bible 365 days and reading a different verse and a different chapter and just kind of muddling through it and just slugging through this thing. And, oh, I got to get through this Bible reading. I said I was going to read the Bible in a year. I have no problem with reading the Bible in a year. I think you want to. I think you ought to stay in the Bible. I think you ought to read the Bible all the time. But if you're going to concentrate on a few things, I think the Cliff Notes Jesus is giving us, the 80/20 of the Bible, it's love God, it's love people, and it's learning about faith, hope, and love. And right now we're going to concentrate on faith, and in the next episode we're going to start opening up the door on the law of faith. You know, there are laws that govern faith, and we're going to start digging into this thing. Because if you look at the previous 3 episodes that we talked about, the 3 questions that we have to answer before we start our Christian walk, I believe that as we dig into this thing and you start meditating on faith you're going to get a better picture of it if you hang in here and stick with me, that the Bible is going to start proving itself and we are going to start seeing things happen in faith. You've got to believe it to receive it, or you can doubt and do without. We're not going to get into all that, but I just wanted to get this party started. The reason that we're dealing with faith is because Jesus himself, when he comes back, when he returns, and asked the question, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth? And I want us to be able to say yes, you're going to find faith here. You can come to Jesus Mighty Men, you can come to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe, and you are going to find faith. Or at least you're going to find someone trying to learn to walk by faith and not by sight. So that's why we're here. We're here. 2 Corinthians 5:7, for we walk by faith and not by sight. That's what got us started. And this question, will we find faith? When you start looking at faith, we need to understand what faith is and what faith is not. If we're going to walk in faith, we need to know how to take that next step. And before I start rambling on, because I can feel myself starting to get after it, let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you, Holy Spirit, that you would never leave us nor forsake us. Holy Spirit, we're asking by faith that you would lead us into all truth. Help us to understand this big topic. Help us to understand as little children would understand. Lord, help us to answer the— ask the right questions and help us to dig into your word. Your word is the truth. Your word is light unto our feet, and we love to be in your word. God, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.