More than you think, faith plays a major role in your daily life. Consider how much faith you must have to eat in a restaurant. You don't see what happens in the kitchen, but you believe that all is well. So you eat, drink and make merry, believing that tomorrow you will not die. You show faith when you take an airplane. You trust the structure of the plane, you believe the pilot knows what he is doing, and otherwise you would never buy that expensive ticket and get on board.

You show faith when you get a prescription filled. The doctor gives you a prescription in handwriting you can't read. You take it to a pharmacist you don't know, who fills it with something you don't understand, and you believing it is the exact thing you need that will help you. Without faith, you would not do this. You show faith when you get married. Marriage consists of promises that two people make to each other for the rest of their lives. You either believe one another, or you call the marriage off.

So faith is a part of life. We always have faith in something or somebody. The only question: is that person or thing reliable? Faith is only as good as its object. If we have faith solely in people, we will get only what people can do. If we trust God, we will get what God can do. Hebrews 11 is called the great faith chapter in the Bible. Briefly, we will look at two of the many aspects of faith that we find there. In the first verse, we read, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen."

The word for "substance" in Greek is "hupostasis." Paul uses this word to describe the person of the Lord Jesus as expressing the very image of God in human form (Heb. 1:3). The Greeks used this word in reference to title deeds. The title deed gives authority or substance to a person's claim to property. Faith gives us the title deed to things hoped for and provides all the evidence we need that certain things yet unseen are all they are said to be. If faith is all we need, we must be sure we know what faith is. Faith has to do with things we long and look for, unseen as yet. Faith makes these things substantial and real. We are told that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. How does this work? We have an example in Abraham who shows us faith as the title deed, the guarantee.

Abraham longed for a son, and God promised him a son. But many years passed, and the son did not come. In the meantime, Abraham grew older, and his wife Sarah, grew older. They passed the age when he could produce a son and Sarah could bear one. In this impossible situation, the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 4:18-21: "In hope against hope, he believed… and being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body, now dead, when he was about 100 years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb; he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. And being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was also able to perform."

Abraham's faith to God was so strong that the thing he longed for became a real possession in his spirit. Through his faith, he had the boy's birth certificate in his hand before he held the child in his arms. God's word and His promise was the ground of his faith and assurance. What he longed for was already his by his faith. So our faith begins with a revelation, a promise, from God. Hearing that word leads to belief in that word and our capacity to appropriate the promises. Faith means the ability to listen to what God says and act upon it.

Secondly, in Hebrews 11:3, we read, "By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God." That is, God's word brought the vast universe into existence. If you want to know the reliability of God's word, look at the universe that he made.

Let's take a look at our sun, for example, it is 93 million miles from the earth. Astronomers say it is 5 billion years old. Its diameter is 864,000 miles, and its interior temperature is about 29 million degrees Fahrenheit. It is the center of our solar system, which also includes nine known planets, 32 known moons, about 32,000 asteroids and 100 billion comets. Sounds impressive, doesn't it?

But our sun and its solar system are only a puny part of the entire galaxy. Our sun is only one star, and a small star at that, in a galaxy of 100 billion stars. We call our galaxy the "Milky Way." It has a diameter of 100,000 light years - an inconceivable 600 million billion miles. The sun is located 30,000 light years from the hub of the galaxy, which it orbits once every 200 million years. And this is still only a tiny place of the picture. Outside our galaxy are quadrillions of other galaxies. Some of them are receding from us at speeds close to the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).

This entire inconceivable universe was formed by the word of God. But this is still only the beginning! What other wonders still lie beyond our comprehension? This fascinating, vast universe of space was all made by the word of God. The universe and its fantastic order proclaim the reliability of His word. His is a word we can trust. A verse earlier in Hebrews 11:2, we read: "For by faith, the elders obtained a good testimony or witness." This means that they received God's approval for what they did. God witnessed to Abel that his sacrifice had been accepted (v.4). Faith relies upon the objective word of God, but it is witnessed to subjectively by the Spirit of god. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. The word translated "evidence" means "conviction" or "proof". So true faith, the faith of hearing God's word as the Bible prescribes, produces an inner conviction that God will do as He says because He has said it. The very presence of such a faith in our hearts is proof that God wants us to trust him for things that are beyond our ability. It is further proof that He will do exactly as He has promised.

So trust in God according to His promises to you. Act upon them in spite of your feelings or circumstances. God will honor your faith as He honored the faith of men and women in the Bible. Remember that the object of our faith is God, not our feelings, Jesus said, "Have faith in God." He did not say have faith in your faith, your feelings, or even in your prayer, but faith in the Almighty God. Faith is only as good as the object. The Christian life begins with faith in God, and our lives can only grow through faith in God. The scriptures say that "whatever is not of faith is sin. Without faith it is impossible to please him."

The gospels mention only two requests that the disciples made of Jesus. One was "teach us to pray", and the other was "increase our faith." The disciples made many mistakes, but they asked the right questions that set them on the right path. Let their example encourage you.

Faith begins with a revelation from God. True faith always leads to what God promises us, though it may take time.

PRAYER: Increase our faith and help us to understand how vital it is to have your revelation in our lives. May we hear your word, act upon it and find you faithful to fulfill it as you have said. In Jesus' Name, Amen.