9/9/17 Jonathan (Video Click Here) about 20
How can we find faith to weather
the storms of life? It begins with the
hope we find in God’s word, but not all hope leads to faith.
So many people just float
through life, blind to eternal things and wanting just enough hope to to take
them through the present and near future.
That’s how a young man named Jonathan appeared to me as I talked with
him at a bus stop. His lack of concern
about eternal things gave him some hopeful but disconnected and random ideas
about his relationship to God.
But when I began to
explain the biblical message of salvation he seemed to have no problems with God’s
authority or his need to repent. He
responded with “mental ascent” – he hopes that the Gospel is true but has not
yet the faith to live it out. He has
heard the Gospel from relatives growing up but without faith he is just
drifting aimlessly.
Faith is different from
hope. Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The hope we have in the past will simply
remain wishful thinking until it brings substantial and evidential faith to our
present. Hope is just in the mind while
faith also reaches the heart. Romans
15:4 says that through the Scriptures we might have hope, but Romans 10:17 says
that faith comes by hearing the word of Christ.
Our conversation helped
remind Jonathan of the words of scripture that he has already been exposed to,
and near the end of our time together I feel like he was filled with great
hope. But will the hope of his mind
become a heart of faith? Did he really “hear”
the word of Christ? As he said near the
end, “It’s a lot to digest.”
Looking for a solid faith
relationship with God in what can often seem like a hopeless world? The Bible is the place to find the hope we
need to truly hear the word of Christ, so that we can respond with faith.
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