The Bible states that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and faith is mentioned in many others ways and referred to many other times throughout the Bible. It is an essential part of living a life connected to the Lord.

Yet what is faith? Many do not really understand what faith is, as I didn’t for so many years because I was never taught about it.

Now one of the most basic and well known Bible verses regarding the definition of faith is Hebrews 1:11:

 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

And there is a very profound truth right here in this one verse that I must admit I neglected to see for a long time even though I had heard and read this scripture hundreds of times over… the word “substance”.

When something has substance, you can see it, touch it, and interact with it. It is real and you know it beyond doubt. It has depth; it is more than an illusion or make-believe.

To me this was quite a revelation when I first discovered it, as I did think that faith was and a way make-believe or pretending that something was true until I actually saw it (which most often I didn’t). The old and often used saying of “I won’t believe it until I see it!” is not operating out of any kind of faith but instead relying on what our natural human senses would tell us, and it will not work. Remember that when something has substance, you can interact with it, and in the Bible, faith and action always go together.

So if we truly have faith in the Lord in the promises of His Word and what He tells us, we will actually act on them and also speak them with our mouths. Just as if when we get some great bit of news from a friend or colleague and suddenly we are very happy and we tell a bunch of others and make plans accordingly. It is no different. In-fact we should have much more faith in the promises of God than anything else!

This may be simple, but when I learned it, it helped me immensely and so I have in faith, shared it with you.

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