Getting Started

When we talk about faith, what exactly are we talking about? Doesn't everyone have faith? If not, does it really matter? And what is faith anyway.

Well, everyone does have faith, but not everyone has the God kind of faith. There are three types of faith:

1. Sense faith, based upon what we can see, feel, hear, smell, and taste.
   
2. Intellectual faith, based upon what our minds can conceive and understand.
   
3. God kind of faith, spiritual faith, based upon the revelation of God in our lives.
   

What is Faith?

Faith is a firm persuasion, conviction based upon hearing, and assurance.

Believe means to be persuaded of, to place confidence in, to trust.

Faith in God, then, is an assurance, a conviction, a confidence, and a trust in God - His nature, His promises, and His Word.

Getting Faith

Since not everyone has the God kind of faith, how can a person get that God kind of faith?

Because the God kind of faith is based upon a revelation of God, the answer is from God. We can't feel or think enough to come to God. Humankind is spiritually dead. That's the result of sin. So we need God to reveal himself to us, and give us the faith to trust in Him.

And that's exactly what he did!

Saving Grace - Saving Faith

For God so loved the world [that includes you and me] that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 (NIV)

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so, that no one can boast. Eph 2:1:9 (NIV)

The selections from God's Word tells it like it is:

1. Every person was under the power of the devil - the ruler of the kingdom of the air.
   
2. Every person followed the ways of this world.
   
3. Every person strove to fulfill the sinful nature - to commit sin, disobedience.
   
4. Therefore every person should receive wrath (judgment).

But God is rich and mercy. Because he loved us, he gave us his grace, his faith, to save us from sin, to make us alive with Jesus.

What does it mean to be saved?

When God saves a person, he makes that person a totally new creature. God makes him spiritually alive - that's called born again. God gives that person eternal life, and abundant life, health, prosperity, success.

According to God's Word, save means the material and temporal deliverance from danger, suffering, from sickness, of the spiritual and eternal salvation granted immediately by God to those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, present experience of God's power to deliver from the bondage of sin

And, a saved person becomes a child of God, a member of the household of faith, and starts to live in the FAITH CLASS!