Spiritual Well-Being- What is faith?

Faith is an idea or concept that I believe we practice more often than we realize. Think of the times in our everyday lives that we must exercise faith. For instance, the simple act of sitting in a chair is really an act of faith. You must exercise faith when you decide to sit in the chair by assessing, “Is this chair going to hold me up?” And by faith you sit, having faith that it’s going to hold you up. You often hear people say I don’t want to have blind faith. I agree that blind faith is not a good idea. Remember the sitting in a chair example. What if you look at the chair and discover that it has missing bolts and is leaning, and seat is loose with bent legs. You would be right to question its ability to hold you up and it would be right to not put your faith in that chair.

Another everyday life example is when you travel to distant city that you have never see or visited before. You have faith that the city actually exists and that you’ll be able to get there at some point and do whatever you have planned to do in that city. Again, you are exercising faith that the city exist when you may have not seen that city before.

How does this discussion apply to our family strength of spiritual well-being?

We all exercise faith in our daily lives using several criteria:

1. Evidence of Reliability– Just as we make a judgement about whether a chair is reliable in being able to support use when we sit on it. We need to know when we desire to build our spiritual well-being that what we place our faith in is reliable. When considering faith in God we need to know that the evidence for the object of our faith is reliable. How do we determine the reliability of evidence for a God we cannot see? This is where the claims of Christianity far outweigh the claims of other religious faiths. Jesus claimed to be God and his claims can be examined and tested for reliability.

2. Testimony of Others– Just as we exercise faith to know that the cities we have never visited really do exist because we rely on the testimony of others. Faith in God is assisted by and discovered using the testimony of others. We hear the testimony of people who have had their lives transformed by the love of Jesus who was sent by God. You can read the testimony in the Bible. This faith perspective in life began when a group of Jesus’ disciples change from a depressed, fearful group to an empowered, encouraged group that were willing to die for the risen Jesus.

Next: Why is it important to consider faith in God & Jesus and Biblical authority as part of your spiritual well-being?

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