Faith, Love and Hope

[AlexDTX]

1Co 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.​

These 3 remain because they are attributes of our human spirit. As such, when we are in the Lord's glory, we will still function in faith, hope and love.

We are all born with 100% faith, hope and love. These are not gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us in the new birth. When we speak of unbelief, disappointment or disdain, we are not talking about a lack of faith, hope and love, but misplacement. When an atheist does not believe in God, he has misplaced his faith into evolution. He still has 100% faith, though that faith may be divided into several different things, but he still has 100% faith. Likewise when our hearts are broken and we are disappointed, we are not lacking hope, it has been misplaced onto an unrealistic desire. When we have disdain we are not lacking love but instead of looking for the best in the situation we see the worst. Often those who seem to lack love have merely placed their love upon themselves.

You can not separate faith, love and hope because they are 3 sides of the same triangle. They are all interconnected. When we speak of unbelief in Christians, we are not saying it is a lack of faith. We always have 100% faith. We are saying the faith is misplaced. Many times we pray for certain outcomes to come to pass, then are disappointed when they don't come to pass. That prayer may have even been based on a promise of God. But it could still be misplaced. Our faith needs to be placed on the goodness and character of God to fulfill his will in our lives, and to carry us through whatever the difficulty may be. This is why Paul learned to be content in whatever circumstance he found himself to be in.

The point of my message is to not condemn yourself as though lack faith or are in unbelief. I heard years ago that when the Apollo moon launches occurred, Houston had to make course directions every 10 minutes to keep the rockets on the right path to the moon. Our lives in Christ are lives of constant repentance. Grace is given to us for repentance. Repentance does not always mean from some horrible sin. It simply means to change our minds or to change our direction. The will and mind of God is incomprehensible to us in that we only comprehend small smatterings of it. Hence our need for frequent course directions. I am not ashamed of repentance. When I realize I am off track I repent as fast as I can. I want to stay on course with the Lord and place my faith, love and hope into all the right places.