Please look up the scriptures I gave. Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 and examples of that faith at work given in the rest of the chapter.
Everyone gets faith from God but it is our responsibility to grow that faith Romans 10:17and Jude 20. We are to submit to the training in the use of Bible faith. Noah is a good example as he spent 100 years building a boat on God's word alone when it had never rained. We are to act and speak according to what God promises in His word with no sense evidence and often with evidence that shows it can never happen. Here are two more examples:Numbers 13 and 14, and 2 Kings 4:8-37. Note verses 20-23 and 26. Believing is seeing not seeing is believing.
Allow me to make things personal and very uncomfortable for everyone here.
Perhaps you could explain to me why my mother suffered through breast cancer, not once, but twice, with the second time slowly degenerating her until the very breath in her body expired.
Perhaps you could explain why in spite of months, years, of constant prayer, devoting ourselves to Scripture, and even prophetic statements from people that my mother would be healed--which she believed with every fiber in her being--that she was still taken from my brother, my father, and me.
I'm not bitter about that, that was many years ago now and while I miss her dearly, I've always believed with confidence that all things are within the Sovereign control of our Lord. Sometimes excrement happens, things happen and we don't know why, we suffer and there is no answer as for why. I've learned to live with that, as a troubling mystery that is just part of living with faith.
See, to me that's what faith is. Faith is clinging to Jesus in the face of turmoil and suffering--as my mother did, even as she expired her last breath. Or the faith that my family and I have, that in the midst of all the confusion, struggle, and befuddling pain of suffering and life Christ is with us, living with us, hurting with us. That's faith.
Faith is not a magic trick, it's not the song and dance routine I see on television with the televangelists on TBN being loud, noisy, and offering their faux hallelujahs.
Faith is the mother in the middle of Africa, who is cradling the dead body of her child that has died from starvation and lack of medical care. That mother weeping, crying, sobbing, looking up to God and asking, "WHY?!" and still believing, still trusting that He is good and all things are within His hands. That is faith.
Go peddle your snake oil elsewhere, it's poison.
-CryptoLutheran