Faith Comes From Hearing

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
~Romans 10:17

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
~Hebrews 11:6

I am fired up :) And I am aware of the fact that I am very tempted to break one of the ground rules of the blog that we are creating together - short posts and no doctrinal dissertations. At the very least, I am short circuiting the introduction posts (I will come back to them) to send an encouragement that I want us all to hear.

As I shared at Community Group two weeks ago, God has been putting his word on my heart. We talked about how we see God through his word in at least three primary contexts - the preached word, our private devotions and study of his word, and our fellowship together over his word.

Since that meeting, God has helped me to seek him in his word, to believe that he is there and that he will reward me as I seek him. I have not had long quiet times. I have not even had all that particularly moving quiet times. At least once I went back to bed instead of continuing my quiet time because my head was so sleepy that his word was a silent brick wall. Yet, on a more consistent basis than normal, I have resolved that I will not walk out the door of my house without reading at least a small passage of scripture and asking God to reveal himself to me.

Since that meeting, I have had grace to interact with the Sunday messages differently as well. I have been able to listen more attentively and to take hold of, grapple with, and understand, and see God in the things that we have been taught.

Since that meeting, I have had many conversations with friends over the word. Some of the conversations have been encouragement and fellowship over commonalities, others have been disagreement, at times venturing into conflict, wrestling over differences. At least twice they have gone on into the realm of 1-2 o'clock in the morning. All have been filled with scripture. All, even those of disagreement, have been filled with genuine love for one another.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because I feel more alive and bursting with faith than I have in a very long time. I have experienced the reality (and pray that I continue to do so) that faith truly does come from hearing the word of God. I feel powerfully that it is empty foolishness to gain the whole world if it means that you forfeit your soul because I would not trade the inner life that I feel today for anything that this world has to offer.

There are so many things that we can be tempted to give our time to. As a recent example, in one sense I thank God that the Eagles lost on Sunday (sorry) because even though I love football and love the Eagles, I know that the more that they win, the more time I am tempted to devote to that sport. It is not enjoying football that is the issue, but rather doing so in a way that steals time from things that are more important. Football will never bring me the life that I feel right now, even if the Eagles were to have a perfect, undefeated season and actually win the Super Bowl for once. This is just one example of an area where I can struggle to give proper place to fellowship with God through his word in the three contexts that I mentioned above.

So, with already way too long a post, I encourage/exhort/plead with you (and ask you to do the same for me because I will probably be struggling with this again next week), seek God in his word and believe that he is a rewarder of those that seek him. Resolve that you will read his word, even for 1 minute, every day and ask him to reveal himself to you. Go to church (and community group) and participate - be nourished by the word as our pastors feed the flock that God has given them. And in our fellowship together, let's not content ourselves simply with idle chatter on sports, the weather, current projects, or anything else in such a way that holds no distinction from the conversations of the world. Rather let's press beyond that to encourage one another all the more as the day of Christ draws near, for faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Bryan