| What is authentic faith?
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| The cultivation of an optimistic outlook on life with a kind of spirituality
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| attached to it?
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| A holy hoping for the best?
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| Is this how you think of faith?
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| Authentic faith is the confident assurance in events not yet seen
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| Faith is not a call to believe in things when common sense tells you not to
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| Faith is not a mindless stab in the dark
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| It is not a crossing of the fingers and hoping for the best
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| It is not a leap into apparent nothingness
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| It’s a word that speaks of reasoned, careful, deliberate, intentional thought
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| Thought upon what? |
| God and his promises
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| If you are absolutely gripped by the coming realities that have been promised
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| to you by God, then how you live your life in the present will be radically
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| different than if you did not possess that certainty
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| This is what faith is, my friends! |
| Positive certainty expressed in action
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| Authentic faith is not merely believing in God. |
| It is believing God
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| Taking God at his word, living in obedience to his revelation whatever the cost
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| because you know down deep in your bones that God will always do what he says,
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| that his speaking is his doing
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| It is an abiding assurance in God and his promises that animates you to
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| persevere in your obedience to Him
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| Do you wish to be a more consistently obedient, steadily persevering Christian?
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| A stronger Christian?
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| A more courageous and outspoken Christian?
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| Then you need to strengthen your faith!
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| Your faith instinctively strengthens in direct proportion to the expansion of
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| the object of your faith!
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| You expand your understanding of the object of your faith and faith itself will
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| obediently follow
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| The object of your faith--if indeed you are a Christian--is Jesus Christ and
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| all of his promises
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| Is your faith weak?
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| It is owing to the fact that you don’t know the object of your faith well enough
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| But when Jesus Christ becomes progressively bigger, or better yet,
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| your understanding of who he is progressively conforms to reality,
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| your faith will become increasingly stronger
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| But how does that happen?
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| By immersing yourself in the faith-arousing Word of God
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| Read of Jesus Christ!
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| The same powerful Word that long ago brought the universe to life is the same
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| Word that can bring you to life and furnish you with a faith that is truly and
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| authentically Christian |