Looking at Faith From a Different Angle!

For years I, like many of you have quoted Hebrews 11:1 as evidence that I had faith. If truth were to be told, there were far too many times when that’s all it was – an empty confession, with a little hope that maybe, just maybe it might bring about some results. Recently I took a look at this bedrock verse from another translation:

11 Now faith brings our hopes into reality and becomes the foundation needed to acquire the things we long for. It is all the evidence required to prove what is still unseen. Hebrews 11:1 (TPT)

I have been reading both The New Living Translation and The Passion Translation this year. Sometimes it’s good to get a new perspective on familiar verses. I am no scholar of the Greek and Hebrew, but I have the greatest teacher; He, the Holy Ghost abiding in my heart and with that I often get what is been called an "unction" to pay attention to a scripture, for it is more than just the written Word of God, it is a Rhema Word for me.

This is the way I felt when I read Hebrews 11:1 from The Passion Translation. Let’s look at what might be a little different: we see it beginning by stating that "faith brings our hopes into reality". That is why we pray, to bring our hopes before the Lord with the desire to believe that He will manifest those hopes and desires into our reality. The verse goes on to say that this act of having faith, ‘becomes the foundation needed to acquire the things we long for". So in essence, as we acquire faith, which comes "by hearing the Word of God", we are in effect building the foundation that our hopes and desires will rest upon. 

You may have already understood it this way. Yet for me, I saw something that I hadn’t seen before. As we build the foundation of our hopes and desires, through prayer we are placing brick adjoined to brick shaping the reality of those hopes and desires. We are manually building that desire as a result of conscientiously building our faith! This is not a transcendental exercise, this is an actual series of movements that reap real results.

Now you may say, what if that thing that I am hoping for never becomes a reality. I would have to answer impossible. For as an artist begins a shapeless piece of clay, with a specific task in mind, there are often deviations in the clay that mold it into another shape. The artist when finished with the project is amazed at the outcome, for it is far better than their mind could have imagined. So too, with our faith. As we build our foundation based on what we believe our hopes and desires our, entrusting it to the One whose Spirit molds our life together, we will look back and see, the Master Designer had a much better product in mind – and we will glory in the finished work!

Maria