Heb 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.
Heb 11:8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
Heb 11:9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
Heb 11:10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Heb 11:11 Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.
Heb 11:12 Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.
Heb 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
Abraham believed God about having a child before Isaac was born. Noah built a Ark before a flood came. If Noah had waited until it started raining to start building , then it would have been too late.
In other words , they did not base their faith upon their experience , they based their faith upon the promise or word of God.
Verse 13 says these died in faith not having received the promises. I take that to mean that they had to take the word of God over their own experiences.
Now a follow up question might be is the word of God only written ? Obviously we have the written scriptures now but back in the old days , they had a spoken word of God to go by. In both cases it was the word of God.
My understanding of the scripture is that God gives us promises but we have to step out in faith and be tested before receiving. Usually stepping out in faith comes before experience. I think we are always tested. Maybe there are occasional exceptions but the general pattern is God gives us his word and we choose to believe it in the face of testing which sets up experiences which quite often contradict the promise that he gave us. that is part of the test. Whether we will be faithful to what God said when it gets difficult.
I should have made the opening question a bit more detailed , I suppose. But that is o.k. I think that an open ended discussion has it's advantages.
The one crucial issue that I hear coming out in the posts is whether or not God speaks outside of the scripture. In other words , does God speak to us through our experiences ? That seems tricky since experiences are used to test us many times. But I am not ruling it out.
Either way you look at it. One thing seems very clear. Having faith in the word of God is crucial because the experiences might not always match since it might include testing. In the case of Abraham , he died believing and never having seen some of the promises.
Does anyone else think about these kinds of issues ? I think it is really important that we be honest before God and check ourselves to see where our faith is really at. Is it faith that will stand up to testing ? We need to be really , really sure that we have heard from God in order to put our very life , both physical and eternal life ,at stake.
If you are like me, there are times when you think you have heard from God in prayer but are not 100% sure. Usually when that happens to me , I begin to pray into it and sometimes fast. I also ask God to show me in the scripture something to back it up. Does anyone else do that ?
