Hebrews 11:1-3 {Lesson 11/Day 2}

A scientist challenges God to a contest to see who can make a better human. God accepts, and the scientist excitedly bends down to pick up some clay to make his human being when God stops him saying, “Oh no, no, no... you go make your own dirt.” It’s one thing to create...it’s another all together to create from nothing. Do you ever find yourself dizzy with wonder at how this all came to be? How you and I and all of us came to be? Is it just blind faith to accept that God created it all? No. William Lane Craig summarized the position well like this: 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its beginning. The author of Hebrews is teaching the same thing and goes a step further when he says that the “universe was created by the word of God.” Not only does the universe have a cause – the cause is God, and the method is God’s very breath (Ps 33). We are not like the unfaithful, the ones who “shrink back and are destroyed.” Those who believe in the God of creation are those who exercise their faith and by so doing, have an understanding of how everything came to be. I wasn’t there when the universe came into existence, but I have faith in the One who was, and I’m convicted of what I haven’t seen – God, the Creator of the universe – the One about whom Isaiah asks, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God the creator of the ends of the earth.” I may not be able to explain it all, but “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.” This is true faith. Faith is not works to earn the good favor of God. Good works are the result of our faith. By faith we are assured of the reality of God. By faith we accept what He already has done and will one day do. Faith is more than wishful thinking or a hunch about something. It’s an assurance based on your conviction that in spite of what you can’t see, it will be there...or already is. Thomas, the famous doubter, said, “Let me see, then I’ll believe.” True faith says, “I believe! Now I can see!” Think about this, without God’s help a person simply cannot accept spiritual truths—they just don’t make sense to him, for, after all, you must be spiritual to see spiritual things. It is God who gives the nudge with the Holy Spirit. Is there anything that you are holding back in your faith today? Faith is full assurance based on total conviction...no holding back. You are banking everything on your faith. Anything less than total faith is not true faith. It’s like the lady who was flying home and somebody asked her how she liked the flight. She said, “I hated it and I never put my whole weight down the whole trip.” The reality is that we’re all headed for eternity. Saving faith rests fully in God because of your conviction in where you’re headed in Him – eternal redemption.