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Hebrews 11:1


missmuffet

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Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

God wants us to learn to live by faith and not by sight. This means living with the idea that He is able to do what we cannot do for ourselves. While God gives us the ability to solve many of the problems we face, His greater desire is for us to live our lives dependent on Him. Godly dependence is not a sign of weakness like many of those in this world think, but one of immeasurable strength and confidence. Trust God more than you trust yourself. When you do this, you gain wisdom and hope for every area of life.

 

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55 minutes ago, missmuffet said:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

God wants us to learn to live by faith and not by sight. This means living with the idea that He is able to do what we cannot do for ourselves. While God gives us the ability to solve many of the problems we face, His greater desire is for us to live our lives dependent on Him. Godly dependence is not a sign of weakness like many of those in this world thinks, but one of immeasurable strength and confidence. Trust God more than you trust yourself. When you do this, you gain wisdom and hope for every area of life.

 

Amen.

I get better at this everyday by the grace of God.

The very name of Jesus means "The Self Existent One Is Salvation" and he lived up to that name.  He trusted that the Father would deliver him from death and he did.  I surrender more to this truth daily.  Thank you for sharing!

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Faith also includes trusting in His Word, which is backed by His Name.   His name is His reputation of righteousness, faithfulness and loving care for us.  It is His character.  It is trusting that He is able to do that which He has promised.  I believe in the resurrection of Jesus as He had promised, and that He will also resurrect our mortal bodies.  I trust that to be absent from the Body is to be present with the Lord.  These are things that we cannot see now but we believe that He is able to do those things He has promised.  He has even given us the "down payment" or earnest of the Holy Spirit to reassure us that the rest of the spiritual blessings are coming.  

The definition of believe includes to trust in, rely upon, cling to and adhere to.  Like belief and believe are two forms of the same English word, faith and believe are two forms of the same Greek word.  We are told that the just shall live by his faith.  Faith is not just intellectual or pie in the sky.  Our faith is reinforced by the Holy Spirit, God Himself within us, and has become a core part of our being Who motivates, guides, and empowers us in accord with His word. 

 Heb 4:12  For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

 1Pe 1:23  since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

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13 hours ago, missmuffet said:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

God wants us to learn to live by faith and not by sight. This means living with the idea that He is able to do what we cannot do for ourselves. While God gives us the ability to solve many of the problems we face, His greater desire is for us to live our lives dependent on Him. Godly dependence is not a sign of weakness like many of those in this world thinks, but one of immeasurable strength and confidence. Trust God more than you trust yourself. When you do this, you gain wisdom and hope for every area of life.

 

Thank you for  introducing this subject of interest. 

Hebrews 11:39,40 And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.

 

How does Hebrews 11:1 tie together with 11:39,40?

 I think it important for me to know since the author connected them with verses 2 through 38 at a minimum for full understanding of them. Neither verse 1 nor verse 40 stand alone. And thus when isolated  are poorly suited  for use as doctrine, as they are incomplete. The fuller text is not so simple to understand without having gained more excellent knowledge of the persons  and their deeds that  are referenced within the body of the author's thoughts. The writer's original audience had I suspect very excellent training and knowledge of th eperson's and situations referenced by him. They were Hebrew.

While I  may isolate a single verse within any letter or book,  it is a far fuller experience that lends to a more correct conclusion reached about any verse if and when I read the entirety of the letter, ponder over it, pray about understanding  it's intent, and read it yet again.  

Seems to me Hebrews 11 begins and ends in a manner that is vacant of it's greater  purpose without verses 2 through 38 being included. Reading 2 through 28 brings a fullness to the isolated verses, giving them their meaning, and bringing understanding of the model of awesome faith that is on the author's mind as  he writes his inspired lettter.

 The fuller context may change the short verse's application possibilities too! But that is the better thing of the two possibilities, isolated from context, or use in the fuller context.  For I don't want to go about building  doctrine for myself based upon a single line, a verse, isolated from it's author's full thought.  Since hebrews 11:1 starts with the word  "now" I might also want to look at what proceeded that  little word  "now". For it likely bridges a following thought with what preceded it too!

 

I may develop faith that believes most anything!  I may develop a very strong faith in that which  is entirely wrong. And I may go sell it to all the world because I have faith that it is so. So is faith in of itself  of much value?  

Is not faith anchored even in the body of the letter Hebrews to evidence? Evidence of the result of faith, and is that evidence not physical, physical history  of faith's results? I suggest to myself that I had better not have blind  faith, for faith  should not be blind, should not be built on one verse from any writing. Instead it should be built upon the totality of evidence available. Otherwise I might develop strong faith in the power of a pharaoh's wisemen sorcerers and magicians and their staffs which turn into snakes when  they cast them down. And not see the power of God in Aaron's staff and more the power of God's word from which Moses' and Aaron's faith was derived.

Faith upon God builds upon faith lived. My own faith in God is built upon the reveal of Jesus made possible by the Holy Spirit, for without the Holy Spirit understanding would have not come to me, and  I would have my faith in myself alone. A dangerous in fact fatal faith.

The point? Faith is not a one liner, faith is living what the Holy Spirit has made known. Even faith in God is of  and from God alone. The faith I rely on is not my faith  but is God's alone, a gift to saints in Christ Jesus from God the Holy Spirit.  

-And it seems to require exercising.

Edited by Neighbor
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11 hours ago, Willa said:

Faith also includes trusting in His Word, which is backed by His Name.   His name is His reputation of righteousness, faithfulness and loving care for us.  It is His character.  It is trusting that He is able to do that which He has promised.  I believe in the resurrection of Jesus as He had promised, and that He will also resurrect our mortal bodies.  I trust that to be absent from the Body is to be present with the Lord.  These are things that we cannot see now but we believe that He is able to do those things He has promised.  He has even given us the "down payment" or earnest of the Holy Spirit to reassure us that the rest of the spiritual blessings are coming.  

The definition of believe includes to trust in, rely upon, cling to and adhere to.  Like belief and believe are two forms of the same English word, faith and believe are two forms of the same Greek word.  We are told that the just shall live by his faith.  Faith is not just intellectual or pie in the sky.  Our faith is reinforced by the Holy Spirit, God Himself within us, and has become a core part of our being Who motivates, guides, and empowers us in accord with His word. 

 Heb 4:12  For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

 1Pe 1:23  since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

Yep! 

Pastor Gene Scott used to make faith an active verb as in to faithe. Though  he was a bit strange a man, I did much enjoy that lesson about faith, that he was determined to share.

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I take possession of the Scriptures as God's gift to me.... more importantly I have been given The Person of God The Holy Spirit as my Teacher! With this the eternal is established in my heart by faith but one day it will be by sight... Praise to God and 'A Glory' to His possessions!!!

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What is faith?

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews has been imploring his readers to keep their faith alive and not give up. Faith is all-important, because “the righteous person will live by his faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4, quoted in Hebrews 10:38) But what exactly is it?

To modern man, faith is a subjective belief, without evidence to support it - or even belief in the face of contrary evidence! But in the Bible, faith is the faculty of perceiving what is genuinely, objectively true because God has revealed it to us. “Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of those things that cannot be discerned by the eye of the body.” (Matthew Henry) It enables us to look beyond our immediate situation and take account of eternal realities. And then it translates these invisible, intangible realities into concrete, observable actions. Nobody can measure or prove the future life that Christians hope for – but if we believe God’s promise of what is to come, we will not live solely for the present moment.

“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Yet it is more than commitment on the basis of probability. Because its object is God, faith itself is part of the eternal reality that we do not yet see! When we live and act in faith, we find it to be a firm foundation; by living as if God’s promises are true, we discover in our own experience that they are true.

And so the writer, rather than trying to explain what faith is, shows us what it does - by inviting us to look at the lives of people who lived by faith in the past. Just like us, the Old Covenant believers were promised things that they did not necessarily receive in their own lifetimes. But they believed the promises of God, and acted upon them - which is what it means to ‘live by faith’.

 
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17 hours ago, Deborah_ said:

What is faith?

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews has been imploring his readers to keep their faith alive and not give up. Faith is all-important, because “the righteous person will live by his faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4, quoted in Hebrews 10:38) But what exactly is it?

To modern man, faith is a subjective belief, without evidence to support it - or even belief in the face of contrary evidence! But in the Bible, faith is the faculty of perceiving what is genuinely, objectively true because God has revealed it to us. “Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of those things that cannot be discerned by the eye of the body.” (Matthew Henry) It enables us to look beyond our immediate situation and take account of eternal realities. And then it translates these invisible, intangible realities into concrete, observable actions. Nobody can measure or prove the future life that Christians hope for – but if we believe God’s promise of what is to come, we will not live solely for the present moment.

“Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Yet it is more than commitment on the basis of probability. Because its object is God, faith itself is part of the eternal reality that we do not yet see! When we live and act in faith, we find it to be a firm foundation; by living as if God’s promises are true, we discover in our own experience that they are true.

And so the writer, rather than trying to explain what faith is, shows us what it does - by inviting us to look at the lives of people who lived by faith in the past. Just like us, the Old Covenant believers were promised things that they did not necessarily receive in their own lifetimes. But they believed the promises of God, and acted upon them - which is what it means to ‘live by faith’.

 

"And so the writer, rather than trying to explain what faith is, shows us what it does - by inviting us to look at the lives of people who lived by faith in the past. Just like us, the Old Covenant believers were promised things that they did not necessarily receive in their own lifetimes. But they believed the promises of God, and acted upon them - which is what it means to ‘live by faith’."

Yep.

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