Home Learning
What do we mean by? |

What is faith?

 Cate Thorn explore what we mean by faith with Hebrews 11 
Rev Cate Thorn

Only logged in users can comment on a video.

What is faith?

Transcript
Hello guys, it's all about faith. I'm calling to Hebrews. It's all about faith. It's pretty. Asset. I think it's implicit more in the gospel. It's something that undergirds those promises. It is faith that will provide and restore the fullness of life. It is faith, that will secure us now and into the future. Faith will enable us to imagine as yet unknown possibilities and to walk into them. How do we know we have faith? Is it even something to be had? For Douglas Hall reminds us faith is actually a verb. We Faith sounds weird. It doesn't the Greek word that's used in the New Testament is pissed us. The one that gets translated as Faith, but Karen Armstrong suggests that it might be better translated as Trust. She writes Faith does not require information knowledge and certainty. Butterfree, surrender and a joyful bit on God's unfelt untried and unknown goodness. so faith is about trust and letting go without any pre secured guarantees without a prenup agreement and without fully knowing the god, you trust it's reduced, faith is not an acquisition, but a posture away of being an orienting, the willingness to be vulnerable open to transformation. It's not something that's a process of our self-determination or our self determinant. Can't imagine much Bayern for a such a notion these days could you? That's especially in the bubble of the West that we live in, because we learn early on that success. As a competitive game, that resources are scarce. So we need to make best advantage of what we have with minimal and very strategic care for our neighbor to ensure, we're not over text. Of this. I ask again, how many of us faith? So, flimsy, proposition, especially when we look around the world today such a challenging place to live in or at least a challenging place to live with hope. Hope into not to be fear shadowed overwhelmed. at the moment you may or may not have realized because you hear the gospel each Sunday week apart is that we're actually working through the chapter 12 of Luke Silly enough. It is absolutely full of reminders. Not to fear. Which rather suggests that the first hearers of the Gospel must have had a reason to fear many things. In this chapter, we hear that wonderful thing. That wonderful piece that says God is concerned even with the hairs of your head. Last week, we heard that it was fear of an uncertain future that causes us to stash positions and disregard the need of others. But reassuring words are offered. It isn't necessary to be anxious about life and death. What about food and clothing? These are human means of protection and well-being. But they compare little with the Abundant blessing of God worrying about them will not make a difference in one's life or and one's death. But we do worry. We can be weighed down by all that seems hard and outside our control. So it got me thinking and I became curious about this this he's this discomfort that we experienced all that worry of the world is a hard place to live for being overshadowed by the endless flow of distressing news. Now, I'm not wishing to be the proverbial Grinch. Thank you doctors. But it is the way the world is. It is perhaps always be like this. We think we live in unprecedented times and yet I think if we looked long and hard enough and probably not too hard, that history would attest that. We live in some repeat times as much as we'd like to, but we progressed But this is the phone, if that's the case. Why aren't we simply resolved? Due to this being the way things are. Why don't we just do that? Why does this discomfort this uneasiness Horizon us? Could it be? There's something in us that imagines. They perhaps hopes. That were not inevitably condemned to such outcomes. Is this something in US, perhaps, deep and unexamined, this just poking and nudging us. Or we might call a knowing in US deep in our hearts that things can be. there are other options and we can participate in making the real That would be easy to go, the whole Pollyanna way here particularly when they're in a position of privilege. When I also have seen a 9, as I'm sure many of you has that people who live in much more challenging circumstances than us, they seem to find ways to come together into eggs to alleviate the suffering of one, another in to change the outcomes as far as they can make possible. We have presented to us so many realities of a world and disrepair and despair. This appears to be the way, things are how it is, but there's something about the way. Those stories are told to us, they're not told innocently. They are told to create a reaction in us, they are told in a way to influence, as I said, as with any human rhetoric, they are not innocent. And they are told in a way that can lead us to hopelessness, to helplessness and to defeat, they can render us powerless before, what we could almost be persuaded. Is inevitable. Who decides what's inevitable? The gospel Stories, We Tell are also not innocent texts. They are also told to influence in a particular way. And they may help balance us. Today we hear in the gospel, the words of Jesus mouth, serve your positions, and give arms. Audrey West enjoyed, what she wrote. Passage challenges us with a simple test. We live lives of 10. Do we want to live lives of taking or do we want to live lives of given? The answer, we give reveals the truth of our hearts and opens or closes us to the blessings that God gives. So assume another way to influence the talent of the way things are or where we go from here, and what is possible. as far as I know, the future is yet to be determined The future will be influenced by the intention and the energy of now. A collective and tension and energy that admits other mobility and allows that some sort of transformation is required of us or simply repeat what we know and that such Collective and tension and energy can determine a future that is different from what we know. It's a kind of transformation that isn't something we acquire by Dental will. But we had grasped chief. Rather us to let go, and to open ourselves to that deeper, knowing I talked about that's already in us and to allow ourselves to be guided by that. To return to the words of Audrey West. The loose, we want to have. The less we need to have the less, we need to have the less we need to fear. The less we need to fear the more, we know that a life of giving allows us always to live not on the brink of Destruction. But on the brink of blessing. It takes courage. We absolutely need companions to the serve with us and for Mutual support. As we trust ourselves to such transformation and then maybe we will become more. Think about, we will become the story of open-handed given. Become people who live expectedly on the brink of missing. And with this, we can have influence to make such thing real in our world. Who decides what is inevitable?