You know what faith is right? Faith is a necessary and vital part of the Christian life.
By it the world is changed, we resist the devil, we walk by it, live by it, stand firm within it and so forth. It is VITAL to our lives as believers.
BUT I don’t know about you, when I look at faith I tend to look at from my point of view. My faith is weak, or I find myself so often questioning it’s validity, or …… (you know how it goes). I find myself questioning the quality of my faith.
In this chapter Mr. Hamilton challenges us to see that faith needs to be looked at in an extraspective manner. Yeah, I had to look up that word too. 🙂 It comes from extrospection meaning: The observation of things external to one’s own mind, as opposed to introspection. Ordinary sense perception or reasoning concerning the things perceived.
What this means is that instead of looking at the quality of our faith we need to look at the OBJECT of our faith. There’s a difference eh? We do need to be mindful of our faith. We do, the Lord himself chided the disciples for their lack of faith. BUT faith needs to be focused less on ourselves and more on the one we have faith in. Didn’t the Lord tell us that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains?
So our quality of faith shouldn’t be our primary focus.
We should focus instead on the trueness of our faith. Whom do we have faith in? Where do we find nourishment for our faith? Is it in looking within, or is it in looking to Christ and his act of redemption? Is it by fixing our eyes on Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith?
How will you define your faith? By your own internal standards and goals.. which are important for sure. We do need to see our faith grow. OR will you define your faith by the one you look to? To the one your faith is founded in?
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