you become a Christian first of all by thinking by hearing some Truth by understanding that’s why you preach the gospel why you preach the word of God and the word of God then gets into the mind of a person and it begins to interact with what’s already there and that thinking process is called perception but perception cannot be Faith just knowing something isn’t Faith you have to add to that the second piece of the action which is persuasion the first has to do with your mind the second has to do with your emotion you

become emotionally attached to that truth you begin to think about it it begins to play upon your heart you begin to turn it over in your mind you can have tons of Faith but if the object of your faith is not worthy of your faith your faith is inconsequential it’s not about how much Faith you have it’s about how much Jesus you know there is an old story about a man who was trying to fix his television antenna in the days when such things existed and he was on a slanted slate roof trying desperately to get the

antenna rotated in the right direction so that he would be able to watch the football game that was going to be on a bit later that afternoon in his hurry he lost his grip on the chimney and began to slide down the roof of his house finally slipping over the edge of the roof he caught himself by the ends of his fingers on the eaves trough and he was was dangling there three stories above the ground in his desperation he looked down and began to cry out can anybody down there help me and there was no answer finally in

one last Act of desperation he looked up and yelled can anyone up there help me and out of the heavens came a deep resonant voice believe and let go after a moment of thought the frightened man cried out is there anybody else up there who can help me I love that story because it illustrates the fact that most people are willing to try anything except faith it is quite evident that the word faith in our culture has fallen on Hard Times the meaning of it in the post-christian world has sort of morphed into something nobody knows for

sure what it means so what is Faith verse one begins with the description of faith it says now Faith is the substance of things hoped for it’s the evidence of things not seen this description of faith is incredibly accurate by the way the word faith appears 32 times in the book of Hebrews 24 of them here in the 11th chapter of the book where we have the best definition of Faith found in the the Bible we learn first of all that faith is the realization of things hoped for the word translated by the word substance is translated best by the word

Assurance or realization literally the writer is saying now Faith is the realization of things hoped for the future is made real for men of faith and Women of Faith so then faith is not ambiguous it is not unsure it is a concrete conviction it is the present day confidence of a future reality faith is the solid unshakable confidence in God which is built upon the assurance that he is faithful to his promises for the unbeliever seeing is believing for the believer believing is seeing let me tell you practically what