SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

This Sunday, we'll be wrapping up our summer series “By Faith” from Hebrews 11.  We’ve looked at many characters who have lived by faith in this great chapter— 19 people or people groups are specifically identified in this chapter.  Many others are also alluded to.  All of them were clearly and definitively people who had true faith!

As I was thinking about my series-concluding message on Sunday, it led to me to raise this important question: how do you know when your faith (or someone else’s faith) is real?  How do you know when it is the kind of faith that pleases God (Hebrews 11:6), the kind of faith that has put you into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3), and the kind of faith that will save you from eternal torment, ushering you into heaven on the day you die (Ephesians 2:8-9)?

This is not a theoretical question.  We know that there will be people who die thinking that they do have real faith only to tragically find out that the opposite is true (Matthew 7:21-23, 1 John 2:19).  Those are people who thought they had true faith but they really didn’t.  So it’s an important question to answer.

"How do you know when your faith is real? ... it's an important question to answer."

I think the answer is fundamentally found in this truth: true faith will always endure the hard times.  No matter how hard life gets, true faith will carry us through. 

That doesn’t mean we don’t struggle, or doubt, or even at times fail when hard times come.  Anyone who lives outside a cave should know this.  But what it does mean is that they survive and even thrive through their trials in such a way that they still trust God to be great, good, and loving when it has finished.  Their faith gets stronger over time, even if it is not always a linear, “every day is better than yesterday” growing faith.  Nonetheless, their faith does not die when trials come but instead develops and grows (see James 1:2-8, 1 Peter 1:6-9).  They still love God even when circumstances tempt us to think God may not love us.

So if you want to know if your faith is real, ask yourself these questions:

Do I still trust God when life gets hard?

Do I still live for God when things are crazy?

Do I still serve God when it is hard?

Do I love Jesus more now than I did last year?  Three years ago?  Ten years ago?

I hope you have a faith that is real and authentic.  And if that’s not you right now, I hope it will be soon.

Warmly,
Vince