"And God said, let there be light: and there was light(Genesis 1:3). And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and it was so(Genesis 1:6,7). And God said, let the earth bring forth grass, and it was so(Genesis 1:11)". These verses in chapter one of Genesis all show us the creation of the earth and life itself. One thing they have in common is that all show life was created by the word of God; God simply spoke and it existed. The message one is to receive from this is, God's word is absolute truth. Now, let's think about that for a minute; God's word is absolute truth. That means, when God speaks you can bet your life on the fact that it's the truth. That is an amazing thing, and something that is very hard for us as humans to wrap our minds around. Just look at the world around us, it is violent and corrupt. It is hard for us to trust anyone in this world, let alone a God you can't physically see. This is were faith comes in.
Every christian must understand this concept of absolute truth, which is very tough for us considering we are taught in this society that there are no absolutes. The only thing you can count on in this world is death and taxes. Of course, those are two things we can count on. We will die, and while we are alive, we will be taxed, but as Christians we must realize that the only thing we can truly count on is God. This of course takes faith, as it says in Hebrews 11:3 "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." This verse tells us that the worlds and all life were created by the word of God, but we can only understand this with faith. If we could see God we would not need to have faith. In Hebrews 11:1 we see the definition of faith: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The evidence for God starts with the word of God itself.
As Christians we must be studying the word of God every day in order to build a strong faith. This is necessary because in the flesh we are very weak and sometimes forget the promises of God. In his word, God makes many incredible promises towards his followers, but it can be very difficult to trust that those promises will come to fruition through the tough circumstances that we face in life. Just look at the environment we live in today. We live in a time when the economy is getting worse every year, poverty is on the rise and employment is declining. I myself get nervous when I see the state of our world, and I am a christian. We have to realize, God never promised us an easy life, but he did say that he would never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He will get us through the tough times and it won't be easy, but it will make us stronger people for it, and most importantly, it will build our faith in God.
Every Christian's faith will waiver at times, it's just a fact of life. We are weak in the flesh, and when the times get tough we sometimes take our eyes off of God. We just have to remember to always go back to the word of God to reinforce our faith. We see these examples in the word of God itself, every hero of the Bible had points were their faith wavered. A great example is found in the story of Abraham. Abraham was considered a friend of God, and made the father of a nation by God, and he had times in life when he lost faith. In chapter twelve of Genesis, God commanded Abraham to leave and go to the land of Canaan. If Abraham did as God commanded, he was promised to be blessed abundantly. Abraham did as he was told, and went to Canaan, but when he arrived in Canaan he saw nothing but famine throughout the land. Instead of trusting that God would come through on his promise, Abraham panicked, and devised a plan which included very sinful acts, to go to Egypt to find food.
This does happen in all of our lives all the time, especially during the tough times. We must always remember that there is away to fight this, and it is through the word of God. The word of God will always lead us out of any tough situations and at the same time, it will build our faith. "So the faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). You might be asking: can we really trust the Bible that we read today as the word of God? For the next few weeks we are going to examine the Bible very closely to see if it is reliable. Our next study will deal with what the Bible actually claims to be.
