The Meaning of Faith: Faith 201

John 3:16
2 Peter 1:3-11
Philippians 1:6

Some claim to have faith, but show no growth or changes in their lives while others who have faith grow and change.

What is faith?

1. Faith is a verb and requires us to do something; to move.
   The non verbal form of faith appears in the Bible 250 times. The verbal form, believe, appears 20 times. In Greek, faith/believes translates into believe in or believe into. In John 3:16, ‘love’, ‘believe’, and ‘gave’ are all verbs. The meaning of faith means you make a constant movement ‘into’ and ‘staying in’ Jesus. Oftentimes, our faith is too shallow and we aren’t able to be deeply rooted into it.
2. The completion of our faith is love.
   1 Corinthians 13:13 –  we need to start our spiritual walk in faith and eventually we will arrive in love. We start off at faith and eventually get to love by what it says in 1 Peter, make every effort to supplement your faith. How old are you in your spiritual walk? If your journey has just started, enjoy it. But as you get older you need to take supplements in your faith which are faith, goodness, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and finally love. Just as we don’t expect children to go from basic math to calculus, we need to go through and develop each step. All of these characteristics combined equal love. 1 John 4:7-12, 20, 21 
3. Faith will be completed by Grace not by our own doing.
   Ephesians 2:8 – our spiritual walk was started by grace. In our spiritual journey, we excel as we gain more supplements, but we are not alone as we continue our walk. There are others around us and with us. From faith to love, faith will be completed by grace. We do not complete our faith, it is completed by our Heavenly Father. He is holding our hand throughout the whole journey. We are not doing it alone. This is grace. We can have peace as it is not us on our own merit the journey is complete, but by the grace of God. Philippians 1:6 God has started his good work in you, and he will bring it to completion.

Although it has all been started and will be completed by God, we can make an effort to move to the next steps.

Jessica’s Reflection: It brings me a lot of relief to hear that the journey of faith to love is not all on me to complete it. 

Reflection Questions:

1. Reflect on the message. What was the hardest thing to understand (or accept) about the meaning of faith? The easiest? 
2. What was the most important thing you learned and why?