Faith , The Final Frontier

[HKHaugan]

Faith, the Final Frontier

 Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things unseen (Heb.11:1).

So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities---his eternal power and divine nature-

--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Rom.1:20).

 While we can deal with other Scripture it seems quite evident that everything we do involves an invisible process of choice, decision and motivation based on faith. Whether or not we believe in God it is still faith in something we trust that influences the process. Because we put our faith in something, that something is the basis we trust to make decisions. If not God, anything we put our trust in to make decisions becomes our god. It is an idol. How many people don’t we see on TV who seek fame through becoming an ‘American Idol’, or a star, or a famous artist, politician or personality? How many others seek the same thing in a career, a hobby, a sport and so on? How many really believe there is a personal fulfillment that lasts and lasts when you reach the end of your ability to function?

 What we put our time, energy and money into is what we believe will do three things: give us an acceptable identity, self-satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. It’s all about self, me, I. These are cultural gods with their goals and idols. Whatever any surrounding culture’s ideals are, they will take the faith we have been born with and shape it to serve the culture. The culture therefore is a god for those who let it shape them and its standards determine the goals and behavior it takes to obtain them. But there is a final well-known judge in that whole process. It’s called death. Death become the judge and jury that ends the process and there is no appeals court, no supreme court, no living authority to change the end result. Death is an anti-personal, anti-relational and anti-spiritual non-comforting final event. No one’s there to meet you except a bodiless, eternal conscious aloneness.

 You can argue that death ends your consciousness and that’s it. But, like all things, how do you prove that? If life is an invisible experience to begin with;---trust, faith, even things like emotions, love and relationships, the real stuff of life,---how do you prove they are not lasting, that each of us don’t last beyond the grave?

 You might hear that science is on the way to discovering how to live forever and new advances in every field will make life different, pleasing and lasting. Realistically now, just how long can you wait for that to happen? 100 years, 200 years or just maybe, never? How long will you be around?

 Faith is a built-in born-in gift from God who is eternal and wants to have a personal relationship with us. He has given faith to us for the very life of choice we live in every next moment. It is the core experience that opens the door to the kind of life that is forever; a spiritual, personal and relational eternity with God and others. God made us in His image and likeness to experience Him by choice, a choice that is His way to experience loving and being loved. It is first loving, then personal and then relational. Faith defines us and identifies us and all human beings as more than a physical being, but an image of God made to have faith, know His love, the love of others and to be a relationally productive person who brings human society back into the life of God. That’s why He sent Jesus, His Son, to be our Savior and Lord in a loving relationship with Him, by faith.

 If faith is the substance of things hoped for, don’t all of us hope we can love and be loved, have an acceptable presence, a secure identity and accomplish something productive? Hope is the quality born by faith, injected in every move we make, that life here is fulfilling and after this life we continue to find that moving life for which faith prepares us.

 If faith is the evidence of things not seen, then the more we practice faith, move into its depths, see its source in the One who began it in us, our Creator, doesn’t it follow we will have all kinds of evidence of its reality? Faith becomes the doorway for our personal testimony. When we are motivated to follow what God desires is that not evidence within we can share? And the excitement that we felt having done something for Him. Wasn’t the blessing we got evidence of something real but unseen? Faith becomes the hunger we develop for whatever the Spirit of God moves us to experience. When we hunger that in itself is evidence. The more we experience the more we hope. When we have faith to reach out to help someone isn’t that evidence of things not seen? The need expressed is a faith step. The help given is evidence. Both unseen yet as real as the sunrise and sunset. When we sense that spiritual leading to undertake something that we could be creatively involved in, isn’t that evidence unseen but real?

 Faith is the final frontier because it carries us into each future unknown event, moment, occasion, circumstance where we hope to be right spiritually, personally and relationally. And when we stand before our Creator on our last day on this earth, faith in Jesus is the only evidence we can present. There the fulfillment the Lord promised that all who believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life will be an eternal reality.

 There is so much more each of us could add but this is another way we can bolster our looking forward to what the Lord would build in us through faith. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing 1Thess.5:17).”