Faith

"Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
- Hebrews 11:1

This was the theme of our Bible study a couple weeks ago. Actually, our overall theme for the semester is 1 John 2:6 which says, "If anyone claims to live in Him, he must walk as Jesus walked." But one of the characteristics that Jesus displayed was faith. So we studied Hebrews 11 and here were the two themes that we found in the lives of those people, as well as in the life of Christ:

1) They put themselves in a situation where if God didn't show up, they were in trouble. Think of some of the men of the Old Testament. Noah built an ark. If God didn't show up and provide the rain, he would have looked like a fool. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. What would have happened if God didn't part the Red Sea for him? Abraham took his son up on top of the mountain to sacrifice him. What if God hadn't provided a ram? Jesus took upon all the sins of man and died on a cross, with the full wrath of God being poured out on Him. What if God hadn't raised Him back to life? Sure, Jesus was also God, but everyone of them put themselves in a situation where if God didn't show up, they were in trouble.

2) However, they didn't test God in this. They based their actions of faith off of the promises of God. God promised rain. He promised to deliver the Israelites out of captivity, He promised Abraham thousands of descendants, and He promised that Jesus would return to the right hand of God. So as these men performed extraordinary feats of faith, it was based off the promises of God. I have often heard the phrase, "It is not the amount of faith that matters, but rather the object of your faith." Think about that.

So in response to that challenge, we put ourselves in a situation where if God didn't show up, we were in trouble:

Two weekends ago was the Athletes in Action conference in Xenia, OH. Two years ago, there were 4 of us that traveled to the conference. Last year there were 21 of us. This year, there were 37! A lot of people were asking me what the secret to our ministry was and I responded by telling them it wasn't a secret at all. We prayed...a lot. But with this came a lot of need for money. Many of the athletes needed some sort of financial help, whether it was us paying for a little bit or all of the $100 fee. I refuse to let money be the reason for not going to a conference, and so I kept promising scholarship money that we really didn't have. This may be seen as financially irresponsible, but I just had this feeling that God would provide. After all, He does promise that multiple times throughout scripture (Phil. 4:19, Mt. 6:33-34, Mt. 21:22, 1 John 5:14-15).

Tuesday night after FCA, Luke, Chris and I sat down to total up the numbers. Here is what we found: We had about 48 hours to raise $1005. In addition to that, I expected a few more to sign up within those 48 hours. I had already heard from one campus ministry that they were going to provide us with $300, and I had heard from one other contact that they were going to help us out a little bit, but I wasn't sure what that meant. Well we prayed over it and simply reminded God about His promises and then we asked Him to supply. When I woke up at 8 am the next day, I had a couple text messages telling me that we had $1100 in hand, without even making a phone call!

As expected, a few more did sign up, increasing our cost, but the scholarships followed. I met with a local pastor, asking the church to help support, and he told me he would call me later in the evening to let me know the exact amount they could give us. 7:45 that evening, I had a voicemail telling me they could support two athletes. Now I just needed to find two more to go. Less than five minutes went by before I received another phone call from Lauren DeHays of the track team asking me if we had money to help two of her teammates to go. My response, "Yes, as a matter of fact we do!"

All in all, we were able to raise $1400 in about a 24 hour time period. Talk about God showing up!! And what a start this was to an incredible weekend. At the conference itself, we had dozens of great Gospel-centered conversations with different individuals and nearly a dozen indicated that they made some sort of decision in their relationship with Christ! Not only did God show up in the support raising, but God also showed up at the conference itself. His ways truly are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Is. 55:9).

Here is the first verse I thought of after that:
"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." - Malachi 3:10

In closing, I want to challenge you to live a life of faith. Put yourself in a situation, where if God doesn't show up, you're in trouble. I mean, really, think about your life right now and evaluate the areas of your life that you are living by faith. I guarantee that each of you will struggle to find a single area of your life that you life by faith on a consistent basis (apart from your trust in Christ). But pray and ask God to reveal areas of your life that you could trust Him more and that you could live more by faith. Also, take a look at this video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ