Atheists rail against Christians because they believe in an invisible God for whom they believe there is no evidence. But this is a mistake since faith itself is evidence. I am not saying that belief is evidence for itself, but that faith, which is far more than belief, is a kind of evidence that confirms a Christian in the belief in God. And because atheists cannot distinguish between faith and belief, they never see this kind of evidence and how powerful it is.
Belief and trust equal faith so faith is more than belief. It is possible to have a belief in the existence of God, for example, but not trust in that relationship and therefore not have faith in God. Faith entails trusting that God’s promises are true and trustworthy. Faith is first of all based on promises not on proof. To tell the difference between belief in proof and trust in a promise, allow me to reflect on the example of marriage.
A spouse has confidence that the other spouse is faithful since faithfulness was promised on the wedding day, rather than because the spouse has proven that they are faithful in the past because past actions do not prove that future actions will be the same. Thus, the confidence one has in the faithfulness of the spouse is grounded not in experience because there is no experience as of yet of future actions and in the present the spouse might not be telling the truth about an affair. On the contrary, the trust in one’s spouse’s faithfulness is grounded in the promise to remain faithful and this sort of trust then gets confirmed in everyday living. A spouse will probably remain faithful in an environment of trust rather than distrust.
Thus faith is essential to the experience of marriage and to all relationships including the friendship with God. Faith entails more than believing that the other person exists, but is the experience of trusting the said and unsaid promises of the other. Hence let us consider faith in God. There are millions of promises in the bible. God promised to make Abraham a great nation through his own son, Isaac. God promised to be the Israelites’ God and to bring them to the promised land and to bless them on the condition that they followed him. Then in the New Testament, Jesus promised eternal life to all people who have faith in him. He even gave a promise to the criminal who was on the cross near him that he would experience paradise with Jesus that very day. The experience of the fulfillment of the promise of eternal life can be realized in the kind of life we have now. Trusting in God’s promises gets confirmed in our lives.
Having faith in Jesus Christ is more than belief that he existed and was resurrected and was the Son of God. It is trusting in the realities that Jesus lived. Jesus trusted God and not himself. He lived a life of prayer and servanthood. He trusted the plan that God had for his life, which included dying on the cross. He trusted the promises of God that he would be vindicated. So faith for us includes living the life of prayer and servanthood and dying to ourselves. It means trusting that all things really will work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purposes (Romans 8:28). When one actually trusts God in this way it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faith confirms faith. One actually does experience eternal life in the good quality of one’s life, when the promises of God are confirmed in one’s everyday life.
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