FAITH: (Pistis)

FAITH is the only aspect of the fruit of the Spirit that is actually defined for us in Scripture, because Hebrews 11:1 tells us: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." All the work appears to have been done for us. This could prove to be an extremely short chapter! We don't have to do any delving to discover what faith means; the answer is lying right there on the surface for all to see. So, what now...?

Now we should look to see if we really know what the meaning means. This is not just me being perverse, or grabbing at straws in order to have something to fill this chapter. It's the recognition that we can all too easily think we understand a passage of Scripture when in fact we don't, or we understand it only in part. Or maybe we don't fully know why we understand the passage the way we do, even if we're right on target about what it means.

It's always useful to look more closely at familiar verses, to check our understanding. Even if we only confirm what we already knew, the experience is nonetheless rewarding. Digging a little deeper under the surface is never a waste of time when it comes to God's Word. His Word is like the rest of His creation. The closer you look, the more you find. Take a microscope to a flower petal and the revealed structure is as entrancing as the flower. Take an inquiring mind to the Scriptures and the underlying patterns are as entrancing as the simple truths.

And if by closer study you arrive at a new and better understanding of some familiar verses, or find some unexpected connections with other parts of Scripture, then so much the better! Perhaps that's what you'll do now with Hebrews 11:1. Let's look at it more closely. Let's take the key words in that seemingly simple statement about faith and see what they each mean, then put the whole thing back together again and see if we still have the same package we thought we had when we started. And hopefully, like many a failed attempt at fixing something by pulling it apart and re-assembling it, we won't have any pieces left over at the end.

What we have in Hebrews 11:1 is an equation. Faith equals two things, as you can see in the illustration. And if, as I have, you add boxes to the right hand side of the equation, you can see that the two things that faith equals are parallels. The substance and the evidence are ideas that match one another, and so are things hoped for and things not seen. It seems to me that Paul, under Spirit guidance, has evoked the pattern of Hebrew poetry (such as we find in the Psalms) where two lines will rhyme in meaning or thought, rather than in sound. It isn't surprising, either, that Paul, being a Hebrew scholar, should use such a device. Spirit inspiration did leave the writers of Scripture free to be themselves—or David would never have been permitted to pour out his heart under inspiration; neither would Job and his three 'comforters' have been allowed to be so obviously themselves—so much so that we have to be wary of quoting from the book of Job lest we find ourselves parroting a wrong opinion! It's a pity that many people should see this individuality of the human writers as evidence against the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures. They don't believe that an all-powerful God has the power to express Himself perfectly through fallible humans. But clearly that is exactly what He has chosen to do in the Scriptures. Even man's failures have been harnessed to produce Divine perfection!

In Box 1 we have the words substance and evidence brought together. What do we generally mean when we speak of the substance or the evidence of something? In concrete terms, a thing that has substance is a thing we are able to detect with one or more of our five senses. We can touch, see, hear, smell or taste it. The book you're holding in your hands has substance in this concrete sense. Whether it has any substance in the abstract sense is quite another matter! For it to have substance in this sense means that the book contains ideas which are meaningful, useful, and grounded in reality. Sometimes what we read does not have any substance.

But enough of what we might take the word to mean for ourselves. What does the Bible word for substance convey? The Greek word is hupostasis. Hupo is a prefix meaning mostly of, by or under. Stasis is a word which has moved unchanged directly into our own language as stasis, and slightly changed as state. Hupostasis means literally of state, or of standing. It's something you can stand on—it's a solid base. The Emphatic Diaglott actually reads: "Faith is a basis of things hoped for," and Schonfield gives: "faith is the solid ground...". We can see what it's driving at. The Greek word also implies the idea of confidence.

Faith is a chunk of good solid ground; it's a firm base; it's a place where you can stand with confidence. Faith is the sort of place where you could build a lighthouse, knowing that whatever the sea and the weather threw at it, it would still be standing in the morning. That's hupostasis. And in our New Testament piece of 'Hebrew poetry' we saw that it was equated with evidence (Box 1).

When we think of evidence, our minds generally link it up with thoughts of courts of law. Which is a very good connection because the word in Greek does have something to do with conviction! In court it is evidence that often leads to a conviction. So it is with faith. Faith is not just an airy-fairy feeling. It is not a rather general belief about a vague possibility. Faith is solid, and it carries conviction: meaning that it is something you are convinced about, not something you feel is sort of likely. It's something you feel so strongly about that you act in accordance with it. That's why James said "Faith without works is dead" (Jas.2:20). Because when you have something solid in your life, about which you have conviction, it simply must make a difference to your life. If it doesn't affect the way that you live, then it can't be real for you. You're kidding yourself. This is why Paul wrote "The just shall LIVE by faith" (Rom.1:17—my capitals). Faith is a way of life.

Faith is the perfect model for what I've been saying all along about the fruit of the Spirit. When you have the fruit it will outflow into your daily life, and the doing of good and right things must follow as night follows day. When any part of the fruit is in your being it will consequently be in your doing also. It cannot be any other way.

Faith and works

James wrote, "Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works" (Jas.2:18). So elementary. Not, as some have suggested, a doctrine of salvation by works, but a doctrine of salvation by faith (among other things) that inevitably leads to works. The works are not the goal. The fruit of the Spirit is the goal, and the works are the outcome of the developing of the fruit—especially faith, because faith is the solid foundation, the unshakable conviction that God and His purpose are real.

Works are not the goal. If you have only works then you will have only the phoney fruit we spoke of before. It has all the appearance of the real fruit (good works that spring from humanistic or selfish or legalistic motives look convincingly like the real thing), and it may convince others or fool even ourselves what fine people we are, but it doesn't fool the One who looks directly into our hearts, not for one moment. God looks at our being, not at our doing. The two need to be in harmony. And not only for our future well-being in the Kingdom of God, but also our present well-being. It is stressful to live a lie, to live a life of works that is not consistent with your inner self. To spend your time putting on a show may have short-term benefits, like making people think you are good, or it might save you the aggravation of having to deal with criticism or rejection from those you live alongside, but in the long term it will breed anger and resentment and emptiness. That's what going for works without faith will bring—a bitter harvest, and not the fruit of the Spirit.

Works without faith are no good. On the other hand, faith without works is, I believe, impossible. It cannot be done.

The reluctant violinist

James also wrote, "by works was faith made perfect," (Jas.2:22). By definition, faith without works is imperfect (so imperfect it's dead!). Faith must have an outlet in works. It cannot and will not abide being locked up inside us, unexpressed.

Imagine for a moment having a total belief in something and yet trying to live your life as if it were not true, denying it at every turn. You'd go off 'pop' with exasperation, I should think. For instance, imagine going through life with the knowledge, with the absolute conviction, that you were a wizard on the violin or piano. World class! But every time someone asks you to play, you deny you can really play at all. You say, "No, not me. I tinker a bit, but not seriously." And all the time you know in your heart of hearts that you're the best and you could make that instrument sing. But you never do. And you never will. Could you, or anyone, really go on living your life like that? The ache to express what you knew to be true would be so persistent and so demanding that eventually the truth would break through. You could not contain it forever, could you?

Now imagine something similar. Imagine living a life of faith in which you are fully convinced of God, that He is the greatest thing in your life. That He guides and protects you, and has made great promises to you. Could you go on living as if God didn't exist?—as if His message to the world had never been written? Could you go on living, once you had believed for certain in God and His Word, without changing the way you live in any way at all? Impossible. Again, I say, I believe you'd go off 'pop' from trying to bottle it up! Real faith produces works, without exception. It's a law of the universe—and it's God's universe.

An antidote to phoney fruit

Faith is a great antidote to phoney fruit. Anyone motivated to do works for any of the wrong reasons—people-pleasing, guilt, legalism, or whatever—can easily change to doing works for the right reasons by getting a firm hold on faith. Get back to the roots of belief. Be fully convinced by the Word of God of the solid ground on which you stand when you believe in the Word. "Delight" and "meditation" again! Once that conviction takes a hold of the heart you'll be a believer instead of just acting like one. Real fruit—faith—is the result. And that leads to good works that are not only good for others but good for you too. Because if you're doing works that have no faith behind them, only wrong motives, you really are being good for nothing!

Box 2

Before we run on ahead too far, let's go back to our equation of faith. We haven't considered the second of the two boxes yet. Box 2 contains the second set of parallel ideas, which are these: Things hoped for and Things not seen. Fairly straightforward this time. Because the things we hope for are by very definition the things we can't see at the moment. As Paul wrote: "hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" (Rom.8:24). Extremely logical. You can't hope for something you already have. Things hoped for are things not seen.

In particular, the things a believer hopes for that he or she cannot see at present are:

1 The return of Christ 2 Resurrection of loved ones 3 Their own immortality 4 The Kingdom of God, and all that it entails

These are things that none of us can now see. They are things hoped for. And our faith gives substance and conviction to our hopes. Our faith turns these things which are not yet reality into reality for us. So much so that we are to consider ourselves even now to be citizens of the Kingdom of God: "fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God," wrote Paul in Ephesians 2:19. He also wrote, "For our citizenship is in heaven" (Phil.3:20 NKJV). The spiritual passport we carry says "Kingdom of God."—not United Kingdom or Canada or wherever. Future things are that real to us when we have true faith. We live as if we are already in the Kingdom. We "set [our] affection on things above"—Paul again in Colossians 3:2. This is how living in the world but not of it works. We consider ourselves now citizens of the Kingdom of God, and we act accordingly.

I believe it is wrong, and maybe dangerous, to think that we shall all be oh-so-different in the Kingdom, leaving the transformation of our characters to the miracle power of Christ at his return. We should think of it as Christ confirming our citizenship when he comes rather than bestowing it. The Spirit power in that day won't be making our characters fit for immortality; it will be making our bodies fit for it, if our characters are already suitable! So, now is the time to become citizens of the Kingdom of God. And the only way to achieve the transformation is by developing a true faith in the things which we cannot see, as yet. Live now, insofar as is possible, how you think you'll live in the Kingdom. In essence that's what will happen with the ripening of the fruit of the Spirit. You'll begin to live now as if you were there. Our old friends "delight" and "meditation" in the Word of God will produce this kind of life—this kind of faith.

A quantum leap of faith

We know from another famous verse of Scripture that we cannot please God unless we really do have this faith in the future which so changes the present for us: "But without faith it is impossible to please [God], for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (Heb.11:6 NKJV).

I especially like this verse because it tells us not only to have faith in God, but also in our own reward. The verse doesn't mean that we should have faith in God generally as a rewarder of people. How would it please God if we believed He existed, and had great faith in Him as a rewarder of other people, but not of ourselves?

Probably the greatest leap of faith we are ever called upon to make in our lives is a belief in our own personal salvation. But think on the fact that it is impossible to please God without that belief.

It's easy for us to believe in Believer A's or Believer B's salvation, because they are so good. They always seem to do the right thing. But our own salvation? Well... that's another matter!. The funny thing is that if you went to Believer A and Believer B and asked them about their salvation they'd most likely suck in air through their teeth, begin staring over your shoulder into the middle distance and musing on the unlikelihood of it! They don't see themselves as you see them. More than this. They're actually strange enough to believe that you are doing all right!

The problem here is that we all know ourselves only too well, and other people hardly enough. As I see it, if you knew the real me you probably wouldn't be reading this book! And if I knew the real you maybe I wouldn't want you to! We're all too aware of what is sometimes called our shadow selves. This is the bit of us that isn't for public display, but which we are woefully aware cannot be hidden from God. And yet you and I are expected to have faith in our own personal salvation! It really is a quantum leap of faith!

Of course I'm not suggesting we're all out-and-out rotten. We're all trying to overcome our rottenness and eject our shadow selves. We're all trying, I'm sure, to make that area of our heart that is occupied by the shadow self as small as possible, and the area occupied by the fruit-of-the-Spirit self as large as possible. And we all have different mixes, different balances of flesh and Spirit inside us according to our progress along the spiritual path. And, let's face it, no matter how much progress we make, there will always, in this life, be areas we cannot win for the fruit of the Spirit.

But because we tend to focus on these unconquered areas we think that God is doing the same. No matter how much progress we make, even maybe to ninety per cent of the territory of our heart, we still imagine God staring at the other ten per cent and shaking His head that we could be so unspiritual.

With most of us He doubtless has a greater area than ten per cent to look at.

But what we often fail to appreciate is how pleased God is with whatever percentage we've gained for the fruit of the Spirit!

Never mind the current situation. Never mind the current position of the borderline between Spirit and flesh in our heart. What matters to God is that we're working on it. What matters is that through delight and meditation in His Word we are attempting to move the border back millimetre by millimetre.

We can't expect to win the whole war in one or two skirmishes. (We'll never win the whole war in these flesh-and-blood bodies.) This is a mistake I'm sure many believers make. I certainly have. And it's the cause of a lot of despondency, feelings of failure, and of giving up entirely. We imagine we're going to meet sin head-on and cast it right out of our life. I know I did when I was baptized. I hung on in there gritting my teeth, keeping myself perfect, or so I thought. But it couldn't last. It never does. I remember when I fell from my supposed position of purity (God probably remembers an earlier date!), feeling that I'd lost the Kingdom. Others I've spoken to have related similar stories about this 'walking-on-eggshells' period that immediately follows baptism. Eventually we put a foot wrong and there's yoke and white everywhere! And we can be extremely downcast if we don't learn the right lesson from our collapse.

The pipe-devil

There's a very wise old saying (theologically adrift, but wise all the same) that goes: You can't throw the devil out the front door: he must be coaxed down the back steps one at a time. I remember a much respected believer (now asleep in Christ) once telling me about his own father, who until he was baptized was a great pipe smoker, and had been for years. Upon baptism he felt that pipe smoke defiled his body and that smoking was a disgusting habit. The day of his baptism he threw away the rack of pipes that had stood for years on the mantelshelf in the living room. He wasn't going to defile his body any more. No, not him! His body, however, had other ideas. A short while later a new pipe appeared on the mantelpiece. He realized that he was going to have to take this 'pipe-devil' down the back stairs one at a time. It was a great lesson for him to learn—and to pass on to his son—so early in his life in the Truth.

How many believers still have that lesson to learn? We tried the front door method with our sin. It failed. So we concluded that we were failures—and that was that. As a result we now have great difficulty seeing God as our personal rewarder. Therefore it is impossible, in our eyes, to please God. We believe that He exists, and we believe that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, but we don't put ourselves in that last category. Our shadow selves lurk behind the masks we wear. And they tell us we've failed and we're not good enough.

But this impasse is all of our own making. It doesn't come from God.

If some besetting sin that we failed to throw out of the front door is robbing us of our faith in our personal reward from God, the solution is not to despair and give up on ourselves. We might mistakenly think that's the only decent thing to do—as if our despair and self-rejection is somehow the most appropriate response to our failure. It isn't. Guilt and unworthiness lead us to repentance and renewed hope, not into a permanent state of guilt and unworthiness.

Poor Johnny One-Talent

If what I've said describes you, then please bear in mind the lesson of the one-talent man of the parable of the talents (Matt.25:14-30). The lesson shouting out to all the self-styled failures of the Christian world is that success is well within reach. The only true failure is to believe you have no hope. It comes from believing that somehow Christ is a hard man who expects more from us than we can possibly deliver. He wants our perfection, and all we can offer is our incompetence. So we reason we have no hope.

I firmly believe that the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" of the rejected ones at Christ's return is in many cases because they suddenly understand how easily they could have succeeded! But they missed the point; they gave up on their hope. Maybe not outwardly—their mask was intact—but inwardly they felt they'd lost it.

They'd seen the Truth as a huge mountain they had to climb, and they'd not noticed the escalators marked grace, mercy and forgiveness.

The one-talent man of the parable had only to put his talent out to usury—to invest it by lending it out at a decent rate of interest. Have you ever wondered exactly what that means? Have you ever tried to translate that into a way of living the Truth? It's safe to assume that the talent each parable-man was given from God is intended to represent the gift of the knowledge of the Truth. God gives us that when He calls us. Some people's appreciation and capacity for living the Truth seems greater than others at the outset. They seem to have been given five or ten talents to work with. They have a more natural inclination towards spiritual things. Of them we are clearly told that more is expected. "For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required" (Luke 12:48 RAV). What a relief it is not to be one of them!

But the downside is that poor Johnny One-Talent has it in his mind that God unjustly expects him to multiply his mere one talent ability into the incredible twenty talent version of his more gifted spiritual colleagues. God would be delighted, of course, for it to happen (and I'm sure it does sometimes), but to say that He expects it is quite another matter.

God's only expectation of us is that we do something—something positive with our gift, not something negative like burying it. Burying it is akin to saying to ourselves, "Well, I'll never amount to anything anyway. Too much is being asked of me."

When money is put out to usury it means the money is loaned out for interest. Once you've loaned it out you don't actually have to do anything. The money does all the work for you. And to put this in the context of the parable, it isn't even our money! It's God's money we loan out (He gave the talent), so that He can get it back with interest. How much easier can it get for us! We're even handed the money.

But what is it that we have to do in our lives that corresponds with the actions of the men in the parable? If the talent we are given is to be "traded with" or loaned out to accrue interest, how is that going to happen?

The talent is the gift of the knowledge of the Truth. How can we trade with that or lend it out to accrue interest for God? What is the most, and what's the very least we can do? Well, if you recall some of what we've covered so far about being and doing, you'll probably realize that asking what we can do is the wrong question. The one-talent man needed not to do anything; he needed to be something. He needed to be different!

If ever you feel helpless and hopeless about what Christ will be expecting of you at his return, what you need is a shift in your thinking, not in your acting. It requires a shift away from seeing yourself as a no-hoper and a small-faither, doubtful of acceptance. The reality of your situation is only that way if you choose to see it that way. Thinking that way leads us that way! A simple shift in thinking can change the whole picture.

The truth is, one-talent man or woman has as much hope of spiritual success as ten-talent man or woman. All it takes is a rational appraisal of what God expects. We have to appreciate how pleased God is when, in spite of all our failures, we still see Him as our great rewarder. It must please God when we do this because it demonstrates to Him that we understand something of His character. And it shows Him that we really do believe what He says about love, forgiveness, mercy and grace. If you fear God, and if it worries you that you are desperately hoping for the mercy of God, then have a look at Psalm 147:11: "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy."

To be believers we have to be believers

To be believers we have to be believers. Now there's a truism for you! But think about it. Because it's perfectly possible to continue thinking of yourself as a believer long after you gave up believing. Faith has to be two-pronged. It must involve a belief in God and in His reward for you. So, are you still a believer?

And never forget that 'believer' starts with that important little word be. It's also worth noting that the second half of the word—lieve—shares a common root in English with the word love. So one might say that to be a believer is to be one whose being is associated with loving!

Win/win/Win!

As soon as we see ourselves as people with real faith in our own future we become different people. We cease to be brow-beaten by our shadow self and we have a positive outlook on life. And that attitude inevitably makes us traders with our talents. Those who believe in God and in their own future are entirely different people from the negative, doubting people. True believers interact differently from people who doubt themselves. A person of faith affects all those around them in positive ways. And so it is that the talent is traded, the gift of the knowledge of the Truth is shared. A person of faith naturally makes it his business to go and trade with the world. Those in the parable with five and ten talents went out and did this. They dramatically increased what was given to them. God's gift was doubled in them. Meaning, not only did the people they traded with benefit, they benefited also. They shared the gospel, and enhanced their own faith in the process. This is what is called in business terms a win/win situation, when both the giver and the receiver come out of the arrangement with profit. The spiritual version, though, is a win/win/Win situation, because God also receives profit from the good stewardship of His gift. Souls are influenced and won for Him.

But what should the less dynamic one-talent person do who doesn't feel competent to go out into the world and trade? What can you do if you don't feel you can cope with direct preaching? What's the least you can do? The least you can do is put the talent out to usury. Lend it out rather than trade with it. Preach indirectly—that's what it means.

You have to enter the Jewish mind to understand this aspect of the parable. Remember the parable was delivered to a Jewish audience. Under Jewish law (God's law given through Moses) the people of Israel were not allowed to lend out money for interest to their brethren, their fellow Jews. They could exact usury from foreigners (Gentiles) only. Christ's telling the one-talent man he should have put his talent out to usury should be seen in this light.

What it means for one-talent people is that the talent can and should be used. It means that God accepts we may not have it in us to go out with Bible in hand and preach to the world in a dynamic way, but there's no reason to do the opposite and deny our religion to the world, keep it timidly to ourselves, bury the talent: we can still preach indirectly, passively, simply by being who we are. Simply by living the Truth in the world we can have an effect upon it. And interest will accrue for God when people take note of our way of life, when they see we are quietly assured people with faith in God and in our future.

I know exactly of what I speak. I was 'brought into' the Truth by a brother who never directly preached to me. As a work colleague he simply went about his day being just who he is: a man of faith, excited by what he knows and at the prospect it holds for him. Any person in the world who is called by God and exposed to such contact for any length of time cannot help being drawn to want to know more about the man's beliefs. It is possible to be quietly dynamic!

God expects no more of us than we can reasonably give Him, bearing in mind what He gave us in the first place! The one to whom much is given, of him or her much is expected. It follows that the one to whom less is given (I avoided saying 'little is given' because the gift of the knowledge of the Kingdom can never be called 'little'), of him or her less is expected. Take heart all one-talenters: God doesn't expect to reap where He hasn't sowed. Just don't hide who you are from the world, that's all He asks.

Extra interest on account of our faith

But, of course, a person living with an attitude of faith benefits not only the unbelievers, helping them to wake up to the Truth; he or she benefits believers, too. Being men and women of positive faith we naturally do a little trading and investing of talents among one another. When we let other believers know how good we feel about the present and the future, and help them to see that they can feel that way too, if they don't already, then we're sharing our faith. If we can lift someone out of their spiritual doldrums by communicating our positive feelings about life in the Truth, we are letting our talent earn a little extra interest for God. After all, it is His talent, not ours. We trade or invest with it: He gets the profit—and we don't exactly lose out on the deal, do we? It's win/win/Win, remember! If we, by loaning out our God-given attitude of faith, turn someone away from their 'God is a hard man' mentality, then God undoubtedly gains interest on the loan. So never bury your conviction that God and His reward are true for you. Unlike the Jews under the Old Covenant, we Christians under the New Covenant can lend to our own kind with profit for all.

Faith now

One more thing to note about faith is that the 'things not seen', of which faith is our evidence, are not exclusively future things, like the Kingdom of God and the return of Christ. There are three other matters of faith to consider. One is the hand of God in our lives now, another is His hand in the affairs of present nations, and a third is the hand of God in the past, none of which we can see, except by faith.

The hand of God in our daily lives is unseen, only 'visible' sometimes in its outworkings. His hand in world affairs is unseen, again only 'visible' in its outworking, and usually only by hindsight. As for the miraculous, direct intervention of the hand of God in the past, we have only the Biblical record to go on, not sight or experience. We need a rock-solid conviction about all these if we are to please God. And we do want to please Him!

To be believers we have to believe, as I said earlier. Being a believer means having a personal belief and not an institutional belief. By which I mean that our faith in His existence, His reward for us, His hand in our lives and world affairs, His deeds in the past—our faith in these things should exist independently of the group of believers to which we belong. We must have faith of ourselves. The Truth is not an institution, or some club we can join and go along for the ride, thinking that because it is headed for the Kingdom of God then so are we. It isn't. People are. You are, I am, he is, she is! It's not a party ticket; it's all of us as individuals on the road to the Kingdom, on the spiritual path.

I'm not denying that we each have a measure of responsibility for one another. But we are never going to be able to take on that responsibility if we don't look first to our own spiritual welfare. We can't help others to grow strong in the faith if we're not doing it ourselves—now.

Faith in then

Finally, to go back to it, we need a strong faith in God's hand in the past. Faith operates in all three tenses. It covers faith in what the future holds, faith in Divine help now, and faith in what God did in the past.

When it comes to believing in God's hand in the past, we recognise first and foremost that our whole faith is founded upon an event in the past. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of all our hopes. Salvation. And if we are to have faith in our God as our own rewarder, we need also to personalise salvation, that is to think of Christ dying for us as individuals. That's surely the way Christ himself saw it. He saw himself saving individual men and women with all their peculiar needs, doubts, hopes and fears; not a huge amorphous, anonymous blob of mankind.

When you look at a photograph in a newspaper you get the illusion that the area of the picture is completely covered in newsprint. But if you take a magnifying glass to it you'll see that it's made up of thousands of tiny dots of printer's ink. Together they make up the picture. Sometimes we need to take a mental magnifying glass to the notions of salvation and the Kingdom of God. Instead of treating salvation and the Kingdom of God as big concepts, grand ideas taking in the broad sweep of humankind and making individuals seem insignificant, take a look more closely and see that these big concepts are populated by people like you and me. Thousands of us make up the big picture. All playing an important role in the finished product. Without those dots there is no picture.

So have this aspect of the fruit of the Spirit called faith. Believe in God and salvation—your salvation. It will make your own life better. It will improve the lives of those around you. And you'll please God. What could be better than that? Everybody wins.