Faith 1.2

Faith is, "Divine Evidence and or Conviction" Think about this if faith is not about our belief but about God giving us evidence and or conviction about something, then it would by necessity require God to initiate the conversation! See Faith installment 1.1
Several places in the New Testament we are told that Faith is a gift of God and as such it is not of us but from Him. Ephesians 2:8 "For by Grace you are saved through Faith, and that not of yourself it is the gift of God"
How do we get this faith?
Romans chapter 10 verse 17 reads as follows; "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God"  I'm using the KJV simply for clarity purposes. Other translations seem to cloud the true meaning of this passage and prevents us from understanding the writers meaning of this verse. A lot of people mistakenly think this passage has to do with preaching and hearing a preacher but the truth of the matter is something more profound, again you have to revert back to the authors language to grasp what he is saying. If you will allow me I would like to break this down for clarity sake.
Faith (divine evidence or conviction) comes to us by hearing, most of us do not consider the true meaning or process involved in the use of this word, if you are a spouse you know that sometimes a your spouse can be speaking but you are not hearing because you are not focused. Typically the conversation goes something like this, "Did you hear me?" "no i'm sorry what did you say?" more conversation flows (fill in the blanks) between the two and finally the focus is there and the spouse repeats what was originally said the difference is this time the other person is focused and listening. That is the true meaning of the word hearing. What you have hear is the apostle telling his hearers that God gives faith to us after he gets us to a point where we are focused and ready to listen. Hearing by the word of God. Again we need to think about this. Word as used by the apostle here has it's root in a Greek word that has the idea of breaking the silence and pouring out an utterance. Makes sense doesn't it.
So here is the flow of this and let me paraphrase, "Faith (divine evidence or conviction) comes to us when God catches our attention and creates a situation where we are ready to listen. It is at this point the He breaks the silence and pours forth an utterance." What happens when God speaks? Something is created and in this case what is created is Faith or an evidence or conviction about at thing.

Here is a weird thing about this, you can have faith and do something with it or not do anything. Either way it is faith. The difference is is when we act on it it becomes living faith, when we don't it is dead not of itself but to us. A long time ago I knew of a man who was poor, he shuffled around my home town in rags and was a beggar, after many years he moved south to a warmer climate, a friend of mine stayed in contact with him. His house in the south was a dirt floor shack. After quite a while the man died and in the floor of the shack was found a small fortune that had the man used it he would have lived comfortably as it was the money did him nor any one around him any good. The point is we can have a thing of great worth and if we don't use the thing it is worthless to the person who posses it. James 2:20 ..."faith without works is dead"
Thanks for reading check back again we'll look into this Faith a little deeper.