Faith is Important

Few people today realize the importance of faith. Most would simply characterize faith as the belief in God; thereby minimizing the true nature of what faith is. I suppose this is the reason it is seldom talked about or taught. It is, however, interesting to note that the person who taught about faith in the Bible more than anyone else was Jesus. We might gather from this that Jesus at the least thought faith somewhat important.

The real truth is that faith is much more than simply a belief in God. It is certainly one of the primary teachings of the Bible, and perhaps the most important. I heard one minister once describe faith as “the thread out of which the fabric of the Word of God is woven.” It is fundamentally part of everything that is the Word of God. Faith is indeed an eternal truth as Paul noted in I Corinthians 13:13.

We are saved by faith. We are to live by faith. Faith is our victory over the world. And without faith we cannot please God. Hmm…sounds pretty important to me.

Ephesians 2:8 declares, “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” We are saved through faith! We cannot even get to God without faith. Our relationship with Almighty God begins with faith.

Once we get to God and we have a relationship with him, we are to live by faith. Romans 1:17 tells us, “therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith.” We are the just, the righteous ones and how shall we live? By faith! Faith is not a rip cord that we pull to bail us out when we find ourselves in a dire situation. It must be something that is part of our daily life if we are to live by it.

How many want to go through life defeated and barely getting along? I don’t know about you, but I would much rather live victorious over the circumstances of life than constantly defeated and under the circumstances. I John 5:4 tells us that “whoever is born of God overcomes the world: and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.” Did you get that? Our faith is the victory! God wants us to be overcomers. He planned on us overcoming the trials of life through our faith.

According to Hebrews 11:6 “without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” If we want to please God we must have faith. Imagine that: ‘we can please God.’ But in order to do it we must have faith. I do find it interesting that what really pleases God is not the do’s and don’t’s we hear about from religious people but rather our faith. It was Abraham’s faith that pleased God. When Abraham believed God, he accounted it to him for righteousness. Wow! Think about that: as we believe God it will be accounted to us for righteousness.

As we understand the importance of faith, we ought to apply ourselves to understand what it is and how to put it to work in our lives. How can we expect to live by faith much less live victoriously unless we know what faith is and how it works? Let us therefore study to show ourselves approved unto God a workman that need not be ashamed, II Timothy 2:15.