Faith - What is it and how do we get it?

We have had some time as a church to think more about the journey of love, together and most recently the "power of another life" - from Galatians 2:20. At the heart of the bigger story is the journey of faith and this is what we focused on last Sunday (12 June, 2011). In Luke 18:8 at the end of the parable about the unjust judge, Jesus says "when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?". It is clear that faith in Jesus will come under increasing challenge over the next months and years. We live in a society that finds the whole story of Christianity challenging and offensive. It is difficult when a society believes that all beliefs are of equal (or no) merit, to say that there is only one way - the way of the crucified Christ.

On Sunday our theme was "faith" and our focus was on Hebrews 11:1 "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". The whole of Hebrews 11 is a remarkable chapter illustrating faith in the lives of the great ones (but who also were fragile and far from perfect, like us). We also read together Genesis 22 about God's test of Abraham who was called on to sacrifice his only son. What a remarkable testimony of faith. The Bible tells us that "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17) - so the challenge for us all is to commit ourselves to spending time in the word of God, to increase our faith. The message from can be heard in the Listen tab of this website and is titled: 2011-06-12 Faith.