Faith @ Bibles4Free.com

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Chapter 1, Why Faith?

Its Monday morning at 8 am when I started to pray and seek God to find out what He would have me to teach the kids in our Bus Ministry for next Sunday. My name is David Burnette and at the time I penned this book I had the privilege to teach at the Canaan Baptist Church in Covington, Georgia. God has called me to the Ministry and I teach the precious kids that we are blessed to bus in each week the tremendous Word of God. As I start to pray to God through the Holy Spirit, God lays a simple thought on my heart "Faith". Although I did not hear an audible voice, it was as clear as someone shouting from a megaphone. I said to myself, "sure God, Faith, that sounds like a great message". I knew that faith means trust and all the precious souls on Sunday need to have faith in Jesus-Christ to be saved. In my prayer conversation back to God I said,"Sure God, Faith means trust, so what else would you have me to teach?" It is usually at this time of preparation that the Holy Spirit leads me to a Scripture or story of the Bible. When I find the one He wants me to teach on it seems if the words jump off the page. I started searching scriptures and asking God through prayer, "O.K. Lord, Faith, Do you want me to illustrate a story from the Bible and show the kids how they need to be saved through Jesus-Christ?" So I kept searching through the pages of the Bible trying to listen to God. At that time a felt an awesome presence of the Holy Spirit impressing on my heart "Just Faith". My conversation to God through prayer intensified, "Lord I must be missing something here. What should I tell? I can't just stand up their and say faith means trust. You need to have faith in Jesus-Christ to be saved and go to heaven. Lord that will take only 2 minuets and these kids need more of a story with lots of illustrations. Plus Lord you know I need to fill 30 minutes of time. What more do you want me to add to faith?"

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Chapter 1, Why Faith?

My search became more frantic. I searched through the concordance and the helps looking in every area but nothing I read gave me any peace. At that moment I looked across my prayer desk to see a metal wall planter my wife had just purchased for me. It was still in the plastic and when I unwrapped the planter I discovered the word Faith was engraved across the front of it. As soon as saw the word faith is was as if the Holy Spirit confirmed in my heart "Just Faith." I said to myself and to God, "O.K Lord just faith." I then closed my Bible and started thinking of my own faith in the Lord Jesus-Christ. I thought about the day I was saved. As a 5 year old boy, in the Second Baptist Church in College Park Georgia, I asked the Lord Jesus-Christ to forgive my sins and come inside my heart. Can you believe it, as a 5 year old boy He did just that. All because of my faith in Him and what He did on Calvary. My mind then started turning the pages in my life and I started realizing how my faith has kept me walking and seeking God and His will for my life. I thought of my teen age years and how my faith kept me from drugs and alcohol. How my faith kept me to live a moral life although I did grow up in a broken home where no one placed a priorty on Church or valued the things of God. I did sin after my salvation and to this day struggle with sin but my faith keeps me coming back to my Savior for continued fellowship with my Lord. My faith led me through my early adult years where temptation was greater and more mistakes were made but where sin did abound grace did much more abound. My faith led me through my early adult years of marriage, children, and some unexpected physical challenges of Von Willabrands disease, chronic kidney stones, diverticulitis, and diabetes. After briefly thinking of the pages of my life I said to the Lord through prayer, "Lord, how can I fit this message of faith into a 30 minute message?" I sat down with pen and paper and started to make out a lesson about faith for our bus ministry. My main focus for this lesson was for the kids to understand how important faith would be to them in their life.

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Chapter 1,Why Faith?

How it is the very foundation to eternal life and to a successful life here on earth. Not only does faith affect my life but every life I come in contact with. Our loved ones we come in contact with that are not saved will see out faith and make a decision seek God for themselves based primarly on the faith we exibit when faced with lifes adversities. When a loved one dies others will see your faith that gives you the peace that passes all understanding. Wow, what a challenge, to show these little ones the most important principle for their lives, Faith. The only way I could think to etch the importance of this"faith" is to have them repeat " I must have faith in God." We started saying that 10 times, "I must have faith in God." The reason I wanted the kids to repeat this over and over is because of a preacher I heard 10 years ago. This preacher had us say a point in his message over and over "Sin always complicates life." To this day I still remember that point and if I can get the kids to remember "I must have faith in God" I am sure it will change their lives. God gave me grace to deliver this message of faith to the kids. I described to these precious souls who God is, why Jesus-Christ died for them, how we all sin and how that sin seoerates us from a loving God. I was amazed how God moved in the service as 20 kids came foward to make a decision of faith. They came just as they were, just as I did as a 5 year old boy, sinners in need of a savior, seperated from God, with the only way to be redeemed, faith in Jesus-Christ. I left that service Sunday morning praising the Lord for what He had accomplished today and looking foward to Sunday nights service. That night the pastor of our church, Dr. Scott Caudill, delivered a great message and the Holy Spirit convicted my heart on serving Him. I then went to the alter to pray and i saked God, "Is their anything you want me to do to be a better servent for you?" It was at that time that I felt the same pressence of the Holy Spirit that led me to deliver the message of faith impress on my heart to "wright this book." I thought to myself that I must be imagining things but sensing such a pressence of the Holy Spirit I returned to my seat.

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Chapter 1,Why Faith?

In my mind I said, "Yes Lord" I got a good nights rest and the next morning started to pray and seek God for the next message for the kids and again the impression to write this book was on my heart. Wanting to be obedient to the Lord but realizing that I cant write a book I said to God through prayer, "God, I cant write a book, I am not educated enough, no one would want to read what I write." I thought the burden would go away and I could explain this away. Over the next the few days all I saw was books. People every where were realeasing books. Bill Clinton, Bill O'Riley, and many others. Every time I turned on the TV, every conversation I overheard, books, books, books. I sit down to pray, books. I open the Bible, books. I felt such a pressence of the Holy Spirit to write a book, and not just any book, this book. Faith. So I said to the Lord after a month of wresteling with this prompting of the Holy Spirit. "O.K, Lord, I will write this book and I know that I cannot write but I will seek you and your word to write what you give me I will put on pen and paper. I dont know how it will be published. I dont know who will want to read what I write but Lord if you want me too, one thing I do have and that is Faith in You. Lord. Faith that you will give me what to write, Faith that you will publish it, Faith that you will lead others to read it. If their is any thing you have taught me Lord is that I must have faith in God."

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Chapter 2, Faith Defined
What is Faith?

The word faith is defined in the dictionary as a confident belief in truth, value, or trust worthiness of a person , idea, or thing. The Bible defines faith in HEBREWS 11:1, NOW FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN. You can see after reading the definition in the dictionary and the Bible that faith means trust on surface but if you look much deeper you will see it means much more. It causes a person to ask, how do I trust? Why do I trust? What is my trust based on? If a person simplifies their thoughts they will see that faith means trust. Trust is defined in the dictionary as a confident or a 100% assured belief that is based on truth.

(Dictionary Definition) Faith = Trust = 100% Confident Belief (Based on) Truth

If we simplify the Bible definition we see that faith is the substance of things hoped for , or a thing we believe will happen , based on the unseen truth, This is close to the dictionary definition but with the emphasis is on the unseen truth,

(Bible Definition) Faith = Concrete Anticipation (Based on) Unseen Proven Truth

If you think about the Bible and dictionary both mean the same thing. I believe something will happen because I have evidence or proof that it will. An illustration of this definition is something I learned in business training. My training supervisor would try to teach us to depend on our co-workers. He would have you turn away from your co-worker so your back was toward them. You would then fall backwards to have faith or trust that your co-worker would catch you. Now since I weighed 240lbs. I found out real fast that not everyone could catch me. When it was my turn again I found out.

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Chapter 2, Faith Defined

that my faith in the person trying to catch me was based on the evidence of how strong my co-worker was. If my co-worker weighed 100lbs. the evidence or truth is that they can not catch me and I found myself to not have faith in them to catch me. We can see that the root to our faith is truth and our own personal faith is base on our own personal perception of the truth. The word perception simply to become aware of through any of our senses. You can see why the Bible definition is so complete because faith is the antisapation of the truth. A good example of faith in my own life is my memory Christmas time as a child. My mom and dad would tell me Santa Clause is comming at Christmas. I would watch telivision and see the specials of Chris Cringle becoming Santa Clause and bringing gifts to good little boys and girls. When I went to school I heard of stories Santa bringing gifts. I had faith that Santa was real and he was coming to see me at Christmas. That was my perception of the truth based on the evidence around me. Today people believe everything under the sun but what you have to ask yourself is what do I believe? More importantly is what I believe based on truth or error? Is my perception of the truth the absolute truth or is my perception of the truth based on errors of good intentions. What is the absolute truth? We will examine the truth in the following pages and I challenge you to compare the evidence to what you now except as truth.

Faith or Agreement?
As I examine what I believe and talk to people about what they believe I find myself comming to a conclusion. We are a generation that doesn't understand what we believe or why we believe. We dont even understand what believe means. We live in the information age and in this day and time we input information and move on without thinking about what we are puting into our minds. This information overload causes us to not digest our thoughts. I find myself doing this all the time. At lunch time I drive through a fast food line and order lunch while I am thinking of 10 other things. I start to eat and ask myself why did I order this? My stomach tells me I am hungry but I haven't even thought what do I want to eat. The same is true about what we believe in

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Chapter 2, Faith Defined

God. I will ask someone, what do you believe about God? The will tell me what they think and I will ask them , why do you believe that? It's then I get that familiar blank stare and some frustrated response that ends up with,"that's just what I believe!" The same is true when it comes to faith. People today confuse faith with agreement. It is possible to agree with something without having faith in something. Faith is 100% confident belief based on my perception of the truth by my examination of the evidence. Agreement is a 50% to 100% agreeable belief based on my perception of the truth based on my examination of the evidence. While disagreement is 0% to 49% agreeable belief based on my perception of the truth based on the evidence.

100% = Faith
50% to 100% = Agreement
0% to 49% = Disagreement

The less than 100% confident belief is not faith but rather agreement based on some doubt that the evidence is truth. When we are in agreement that is less than faith we are saying that we believe something is mostly true but we have some degree of reservation that it may contain error. An illastration of this is how I feel about grapes. I agree that grapes are sweet. In the past a majority of the grapes I have eaten are sweet. Occasionally though I get a few sour grapes. If I want something sweet I still reach for grapes because I agree they are sweet based on my perception of grapes in past experiences. If I had never had a sour grape then I would have faith that grapes are sweet but that one sour grape causes me to agree that grapes are sweet but I loose faith about grapes being sweet. People are simular in how they perceive Jesus-Christ. I see this weekly in the bus ministry. Most of the kids we bring in come from broken homes and have a hard time with faith. It is hard for them to believe that God loves them because of the evidence of the broken home in their lives. The tend to agree that God loves them because of the love we show them but to have faith (or a 100% confident belief) takes a longer period of time. Once they understand that sin ( or disobedience to God) produces the heartache or sour grapes in their lives they can have faith in the love of God. The kids can see that the broken home is not an abandenment of God but rather the sinful decisions of their parents. When they resolve this issue they are very respondent to the Gospel of Jesus-Christ.

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Chapter 2, Faith Defined

Can I ask you a question? When it comes to how you feel about God's loves toward you do you have faith that God loves you? Do you just have a agreement that God loves you with a reservation of doubt based on some circumstance in your past? Do you think because of your rebellion in the past that God could never love me? No matter how you feel you can rest assured that God loves you because He said so in His word.

Faith Produces Works
Your Faith will produce a work or action. If you 100% believe that something will happen then your anticapation of that thing happening will cause you to take steps in that direction as if it has already happened. The Bible explains that in James 2:17-18, EVEN SO FAITH, IF IT HATH NOT WORKS IS DEAD BEING ALONE. YEA, A MAN SAY, THOU HAST FAITH WITHOUT THY WORKS AND I WILL SHOW MY FAITH BY THY WORKS. Your works are a good indication of you having faith in something or if you have true feelings of doubt. An illastration of this is your paycheck. If you take your check and diposit it and then start to wright checks for groceries and bills instantaneously then you have faith that the check is good. This faith in your paycheck causes you produce a work to spend it before you know it is good. Your faith is based on the check being good in the past. If you had been given a bad paycheck in the past then your lack of faith would cause you to wait till the check cleared. This illastration can be applied to our spiritual lives. If you have have faith that your sins are forgiven then you will live as if they have. You will be able to share your faith because you have no doubt that it is true. You will be able to sleep at night knowing that if you died in your sleep then Heaven would be youo home. The truth is that your faith in God will produce the work of peace in your heart.