What does true faith mean?

Jay Sea

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Short answer: It is about pursuing God's Will for your life zealously. And when you fall down in that pursuit, getting back up and continuing to do so.
I agree whole heartedly and would add that Love is the key: Love G-d, love yourself, love your neighbour and love your enemy as G-d does.
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Jay Sea
 
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Aussie Pete

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You misinterpret my point about acting christian, not acting it, acting it out, meaning living it.

If stop hating and anger is stop being huiman, I am an alien now. Never felt much anger anyways, before troubled times and drugs. I will not pester God yet. I will wait till I know more. Unqualified yey. I was an atheist, I do not know the bible at all, apart from the atheist perspective, from Hitchens, dawkins, harris, etc. I cannot ask to join before I understand those verses from a christian perspective. If you have gotten the verses from athists angry with the religion, I cannot use it as gospel, even if I trust them as people of honesty, when they have such strong feelings against the christian people and God. No hurry, I ask when I am ready

Losing fear may mean that, I do not know. Just a personal feeling I lost in other regards. I do not need more answers, I am satisfied. No problem. But I feel I should know more about my faith, since I learned it from an atheist perspective. And from a hateful perspective. Not to cover my ass, but to di it right. Or fair if you will. Hear both sides out. Faith is faith, it stays put, it is a feeling, does not require evidence. Come on people.
Your definition of faith is the natural kind that we are all born with. The faith that is of God is spiritual. Ordinary faith applies to what can be determined naturally. We apply it every day without even thinking about it. If you sit on a chair, you are trusting that it is not going to collapse under you.

There is a kind of faith that unbelievers are not aware of. The Bible calls it "The faith of God". Not,
"faith in God." God's faith becomes ours when we hear His Word with receptive ears. The atheist hears God's word and rejects it out of hand. There were three devout atheists in my family. My father and youngest brother have passed away. Dad heard the gospel many times from my believing sister. He became agnostic before he passed away. My youngest brother also heard the word but rejected it all his too short life. My younger brother is still alive, if you can call perpetual alcoholism living.

I knew about Jesus and God from sunday school. I was born in the generation that believed people should be free to make up their own minds. I believed it all, Jesus dying, rising from the dead and such. I could repeat the Lord's prayer - I heard it often enough at school. It meant nothing to me because I had no faith. My idea of God was pretty common. The bearded guy on a throne looking around for someone to punish. I tried to stay invisible. I even went to a Billy Graham meeting. It was a way of escaping the drudgery of recruit school (Australian Navy).

It was not until a few years later that the truth cut through. I can't explain it, but I realised that I was a sinner and destined for hell. That scared me to death. Then I heard the good news that Jesus died for me. I accepted without hesitation. There is a lot more than that, but I won't go into it.

What happened? Faith entered my heart, not the natural kind, but spiritual. I could "see" where I was headed and "see" that Jesus could save me from that fate. And it is not a one off. The Christian life is a life of faith. Seeing really is believing. But a blind man cannot see the sunset or the Taj Mahal. If you describe it to him, he is none the wiser. "What is red?" he will say. And everyone is born spiritually blind. God must enable us to accept His word. If we ask Him, He will enable us.
 
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Ceallaigh

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aiki

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Depending on who you speak to, belief in God is conflated with faith. Am I assuming incorrect when I read faith as belief+trust+no fear? Guiding your life according to Gods plan, no matter what. Live right, do right. Seems like many people just say they have faith, and all it means is that they grew up in a christian home, and since they mesh in various sins, and pretend like it is compatible with christianity. Go out and sleep with someone new each weekend, or blaspheme, steal and cheat, etc, and still they say they have faith. What does it generally mean here? Seeing as it means nothing in my country.

According to the word of God, the Bible, "faith," "trust," and "belief" are all highly interconnected, nearly synonymous terms, that Scripture often employs interchangeably. What is faith? Here's one very good definition:

"Faith is believing a thing is so,
When it appears it is not so,
In order for it to be so,
Because it is so."

Faith and knowledge are directly-related in Scripture, the latter producing the former:

Romans 10:15-17
15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report?
17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.


2 Timothy 1:12
12 ...for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.


Paul heard the Gospel, was persuaded to a firm conviction - a belief - in it, and as a result, took corresponding action. His faith began with coming to know the truth, the facts, of the Gospel, which facts persuaded him to trust himself to Christ "against that day."

This last bit, the acting in accord with one's belief, is an important feature of "saving faith." Many "Christians" agree intellectually with the tenets of the Christian faith, of the Gospel, but that belief does not manifest in any kind of properly correspondent living. That is, they "talk the talk but they don't walk the walk." The apostle James puts a very fine point on this matter:

James 2:18-20
18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?


When a person really believes, say, that a medicine will make them well, they don't just agree that the medicine will make them well and then leave it untouched in the bathroom cabinet. No, if they know the medicine is effective against their particular disease, and are firmly convinced that the medicine will heal their physical ailment, they will consume the medicine. This is what Paul laid out to Timothy: knowledge (I know)>firm conviction (I am persuaded)>action (I have committed unto him).

Unfortunately, some read what James wrote and they get the wrongheaded notion that works are necessary to salvation rather than merely an inevitable result of it. They read James's words and begin to think that the "apple tree" of salvation must bear the "apples" of good works in order to be an apple tree. But while apples are inevitable from a healthy, mature apple tree, the apple tree must already be an apple tree in order to bear apples; it doesn't become an apple tree only when it has produced some apples. And so, we don't look at an apple tree sapling and declare it a false apple tree because it is too young to bear apples; we don't encounter an apple tree diseased, or infested by damaging insects, unable, as a result, to bear fruit and say it is a false apple tree; we don't observe an apple tree withered and dry, starved of soil nutrients and water, producing only small, bitter fruit and announce that the poor apple tree was never truly an apple tree. And this is so because we understand that the fruit an apple tree bears is not what makes it an apple tree.

Strangely, while it is easy to understand that apples are not necessary to an apple tree being an apple tree, some Christians get in quite a tangle about the "fruit" of good works being necessary to a Christian's saved condition. They mistake James's meaning entirely, making faith that saves contingent upon corresponding good deeds. But a person's faith - a faith that has resulted in genuine salvation - may be ill-informed, lacking knowledge, or corrupted by false teaching; it may be very new, immature, needing the strength that only the exercise of it and time can produce in order to "bear fruit"; it may be plagued by old, well-entrenched habits of thought and behavior that hinder the "fruit" of a holy life. And so on. It is, therefore, a mistake to take James to mean that saving faith must produce good works and produce such works immediately and comprehensively. At best, we can understand James only to be saying that full knowledge and a firm conviction of the truth of the Gospel will inevitably, in the life of a sufficiently mature, scripturally-knowledgeable, spiritually well-nourished believer, be reflected in the life of that believer.

What's really going on in this sort of works=salvation stuff is the intrusion of Self, what Paul the apostle called the "Old Man" (Romans 6:6), into the work of God. When a Christian tries to clean himself up for God rather than submitting to God so the He might do the cleaning; when a believer thinks he must do for God rather than that God will do in and through him; when the born-again man believes he is the key to his own spiritual life and growth, then he will position himself such that he ends up standing in God's place in his life. The "Old Man" assumes the throne upon which God should sit, proposing to accomplish by self-effort and self-remediation what only God can accomplish.

Those Stinking Flies.
 
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aiki

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What happened? Faith entered my heart, not the natural kind, but spiritual. I could "see" where I was headed and "see" that Jesus could save me from that fate. And it is not a one off. The Christian life is a life of faith. Seeing really is believing. But a blind man cannot see the sunset or the Taj Mahal. If you describe it to him, he is none the wiser. "What is red?" he will say. And everyone is born spiritually blind. God must enable us to accept His word. If we ask Him, He will enable us.

Amen.

God draws the sinner to Christ. (John 6:44)
God gives repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. (2 Timothy 2:25)
God convicts us of our sin. (John 16:8)

And then, we must humble ourselves and by faith receive the saving work of Christ on our behalf, freely choosing to accept the truth of the Gospel which is "the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16).
 
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SANTOSO

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Depending on who you speak to, belief in God is conflated with faith. Am I assuming incorrect when I read faith as belief+trust+no fear? Guiding your life according to Gods plan, no matter what. Live right, do right. Seems like many people just say they have faith, and all it means is that they grew up in a christian home, and since they mesh in various sins, and pretend like it is compatible with christianity. Go out and sleep with someone new each weekend, or blaspheme, steal and cheat, etc, and still they say they have faith. What does it generally mean here? Seeing as it means nothing in my country.


I read some denomination thread today, and struggled with definitions, so could not understand what it meant. It was about dead sins, which I think I understand. That if you stop sinning, the sins are dead, and you are good, and in a position to pray forgiveness. But then there was this bit about true faith. Here is the passage. And thread.

True Faith Changes Us

"If we are in Christ Jesus, by genuine faith in him, we are no longer dead in our sins, but we have been crucified with Christ to sin and we are living to Christ and to his righteousness. We once walked in sin. We once conducted our lives in sinful practices. But now we no longer make sin our practice."
Beloved one, there is no need for you to depend on who you speak to understand about faith but you will understand faith when you hear the words of God.

So when you heard people speaking about faith, you have to go back to the words of God written in the Holy Scriptures to perceive and understand whether they have rightly spoken to you or just saying their perception apart from the truth of God’s words.

Beloved one, what is important not just talking about faith but how you may obtain faith. This is what we have heard:

“Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:”
‭‭II Peter‬ ‭1:1‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

So beloved one, you can obtain faith by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

You may ask, “what is the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ ?

This is what we have heard :
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. -Romans 1:16
For in IT the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." -Romans 1:17

So beloved one, the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Beloved one, as you have read what is written in Romans 1:17, that the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

Beloved one, you may ask,”How the righteousness of God is revealed from Jesus Christ’s faith to your faith ? How does faith come to you ? This is what we have heard:

“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭10:17‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

So beloved one, faith comes to you by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

The obvious question,”how do you hear the word of God?” This is what we have heard in the gospel of Jesus Christ that Jesus have spoken that you may hear:

“For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.”
‭‭John‬ ‭12:49‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

So beloved one, you can obtain faith by the righteousness of God and Savior Jesus Christ that is revealed in the gospel, that comes by hearing the word of God, that God the Father who sent Christ gave Christ a command, what He should say and what He should speak.

So beloved one, in what manner you are revealed the righteousness of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ ? This is what we have heard our Lord Jesus Christ have said:

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are SPIRIT, and they are life.”
‭‭John‬ ‭6:63‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Beloved one, unless you perceive and understand the words that Christ have spoke to you are SPIRIT and His words are life, you can’t perceive and understand that the righteousness of God has been revealed to you.

For we heard apostle Paul have explained:

These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”
‭‭I Corinthians‬ ‭2:13‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Beloved one, you can only perceive spiritual things comparing with spiritual, for that is how Holy Spirit teaches us.
For we also heard our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said:

“If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”
‭‭John‬ ‭3:12‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Beloved one, you are unable to understand the revelation of the righteousness of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ unless you perceive and understand the words that Christ have spoken are Spirit and His words are life. For the words that Christ Jesus have spoken, came from the Father who is in Heaven, who have spoken to you heavenly things, that is of faith.

Beloved one, also consider this:
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.””
‭‭John‬ ‭4:24‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Beloved one, communing with God, you need to perceive God is Spirit. So hear the words that Christ have spoken that are Spirit and life, and you will have faith.

Beloved one, if you are considering an English Bible, I would recommend you to choose New King James Version. You can choose the pocket version, that is smaller, lighter and cheaper.

To God be glory. Amen.



















 
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