The Promise & The Word

When Faith Is All You Have Left
By Brendalyn Crudup Martin

Hebrew 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews tells us that without faith, we cannot please God. For it was by faith that Enoch was lifted up and did not see death, that Noah built the Ark, that Abraham obeyed God and left his home for a strange land, that Sarah conceived and gave birth when she was past the natural age, that Moses lead the people through the Red Sea, that the walls of Jericho fell down and the harlot Rahab did not perish after helping the spies.

Faith also comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

We cannot speak knowledgeably about something we know nothing about. If we claim to be Christians, we need to know something about Christ. And since He ascended into Heaven almost two thousand years ago, everything we know about him we must believe through faith in God’s Word, The Bible.

Yet each of us who has truly accepted Christ into our lives has felt His presence working in us and through us. We cannot point to it like we can the piano and say, see, there it is, but we accept it through faith.

The Bible declares in Roman 12:3 that God has given every man a measure of faith.

We need to understand that Jesus is not calling us to blind faith. Jesus demonstrates for us the only kind of faith that can bring us to fulfillment.
He wants us to aspire to a faith that will enable us to share in the awesome power which is God through Christ Jesus.

His own life and ministry, clearly and powerfully demonstrates over and over again the power of God. A power He lovingly shares with all those who have faith and obey His will

In order to become the kind of person we were created to be, we need to enlarge our faith. God gave us a curiosity that compels us to ask not only "Who made me?" but "Why?" What is my purpose, my destiny?

If we don’t apply our faith, we cannot receive the blessings God has in store for us. The Bible says to hold fast our profession (Heb 4:14). Everything we receive from God we receive by faith. And we keep it the same way, by faith. We are saved by faith, healed by faith, and receive our spiritual and material blessing by faith.

The Good News is that the God, who created all things, who knew us before we were in our mother's womb, whose works are fearful and wonderful to behold, who determines the number of the stars, and knows the number of hairs in our head, whose understanding is beyond measure, in all His Majesty, loves us.

He is a loving God who gives and sustains life and created us out of love so that we may share in His gift of eternal life.

In the Book of Psalms it is written: "O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever" (Psalms. 136)

We can have faith in God because He is bigger than we are. We can have faith in God because He is wiser than we are. But the faith that moves mountains is the faith we have in God because he is Love.

God does not force His Will on us. He does not push us around like chess pieces. God loves us, which means that He desires not only our good but our happiness. His plans are for us to prosper.

There will still be times when we will face adversity, but we do so knowing that God will not leave us or forsake us. James 1:1-6 tells us that we should be happy when we are faced with temptation for we know that the trying of our faith gives us patience, and that we can ask for wisdom and receive it if we ask in faith and do not doubt.

When we realize that at the heart of all things there is Love, then we can say, not because we have to, but freely in the spirit of joy: "Thy Will be done." And we will rejoice in the faith that can uproot sycamine trees, and even move mountains.

It is our choice whether we live by faith and believe in the invisible things of God or live by our senses and trust in the natural realm of what we see, touch, hear and feel.

Do you want the type of faith that does not believe what it cannot see, touch, feel or hear in the natural? Or, do you want the kind of faith that sees the invisible, believes the impossible and does the incredible?

We walk by faith, not by sight, for when all is said and done; Faith is all we have left.

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Brendalyn Crudup Martin is an Ordained Deacon in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) and the Associate Assistant to the Rev. Felix M Jones, Pastor of Phillips Memorial CME Church in Phoenix, AZ.

She is a wife, mother and grandmother and a published writer of poetry, devotionals and personal experience articles. She is also the Poet Laureate of the Arizona Supreme Court.