Faith Is Not Having

The last posting about faith was prompted by an article by Andrée Seu Peterson in World Magazine.  She mentions as aspect of faith of which I had not thought.  She observes:  “In fact, psychologically speaking . . .faith is always only exercised in the not having.  Once a person receives, the faith, in a sense, ends. . .” [1]  The definition of faith is:  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  (Hebrews 11:1-2 ESV) so once we have proof, once we know, once we have possession of what we desire, we no longer need faith.

Peterson’s article raised one other question in my mind.  In the past posting we discussed faith in the context of the fact that we are finite which means we must have faith to believe in God and Jesus as well as certain aspects of our relationship with them.  An additional aspect of our faith concerns the promises God has made to us.  One promise Jesus made was that if we have at least the faith of a grain of mustard seed, we can get what we desire (Luke 17:6).  Jesus also states we only have to ask God and we will receive that for which we ask.  He states that God wants to give us “good things” (Matthew 7:7-11).  So Is faith also about getting stuff?  The prosperity theology seems to indicate that it does.

The problem is that we do not always get that for which we pray. Hebrews 11 is the hall of fame of faith and it lists many who “died in faith, not having received the things promised“ (Hebrews 11:13 ESV).  So when we pray for the salvation of a loved one, we must recognize that God will not violate the free will of that person.  If that person continues to reject God’s offer of salvation, our prayers will not be answered regardless of how much faith we have.  We might have just interviewed for our dream job and prayed that we get that job but unless we have the education, knowledge, experience, and temperament for that job we will not get it no matter how much faith we have.

God does want us to prosper but his first priority is not our physical wealth but our spiritual wealth.  The ultimate purpose of faith is not about getting what we want, it is aligning our soul so it becomes like God.  Once our soul is aligned with God what we desire and ask for will change.

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[1]   Andrée Seu Peterson, “Faith is the thing”, World Magazine, February 21, 2015, p. 71.

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