Faith or Experience?

I had a conversation earlier today trying to explain what faith is. It was difficult. Any discussion on this subject is welcome. I was basically asked the question, "It is hard for me to depend God will fix the problems in my life. He hasn't shown me anything so far to show me the way out of my situation. How can I have faith when I haven't seen answers to my prayers? I pray everyday for answers." The problems in this instance are financial difficulties in case you were wondering.

The only response I could think of was, faith is the substance of things hoped for and not of things seen. If you see the solutions to problems, it is not faith in God, but rather experience. Even when we experience something we have trouble believing and trusting in it. The Israelites saw (experienced) God's miracles of being freed, the parting of the Red Sea, the cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night, manna being provided for food and so on. Eventhough they saw (experienced) all these things they still turned away from God and built idols to worship, griped, grumbled, and complained. That's what human's do.

Faith is more than experiencing something. It is hard to explain to others what faith is. Most of us go to bed everynight not thinking about or worrying that when we get up the next morning if the sun will rise. It is just a given to most of us. Yes we experience it over and over again. I don't believe this confidence in the sun to rise is faith however. I believe that we have confidence in the sun rising daily because we are involved with what it brings. We wait for the sun to rise to start our day. We set our clocks by it. We schedule activities by it such as going to the pool for a swim, working in our yard, or simple things like visiting others at times. We wouldn't want to show up at someone's house at 3:00 am and explain we were there to visit at that time because we didn't know if the sun were coming up at it's regular time or not.

I believe if we invest our time around God's word in such a way as we do other things, such as the sun rising and setting, and become involved with what God tells us in the Bible, and schedule ourselves around God's Word, we will have more confidence in what it says and in the process increase our faith. We have to practice, make a conscious decision to live how it says we should live, and discipline ourselves to obey God. We schedule and obey so many things. We schedule time for rest, for play, for television shows, for dinner, for vacations, for doctor appointments. We obey our work schedules, school schedules, sports rules, etc. How can it be that we struggle with scheduling time with God and obeying him?

We must get to the point where we believe God has a purpose for everything that happens to us and to be content with the situations we are in... to be able to trust in him... without having to wonder or worry if he will answer us. We must have faith that he will, without doubting, no matter what. We must believe that his plan is perfect, no matter what our circumstances.

Honor God in all that you do. In your time, in your committment, in your words, in your life both public and private, and in your actions. God is faithful. It is not possible for God to have a faulty plan for your life. You may not see it. It may not be what you would rather have. But his perfect plan is there for you. If you believe, trust and obey him, he will not let you down. He is always with you.

Again, I encourage you to leave your comments as to what faith is to you.