Let me read to you again. This is what Paul says about faith. (Hebrews 11:1) Faith is being sure of what we hoped for and certain of what we do not see. What do we hope for? What is it out there that we do not see that we long for? Certainly a resting place. Something that is promised to us by God himself. And he doesn’t go back on his promises. We just have to know that he is there. It’s just like I told the kids up here this morning, although we know or we think there is a place called Alaska, the only way we can be sure is to have faith that that piece of land is out there. The only way we can be sure that there is a God is to have faith that he exists. Now, Abraham had some faith but he had questions, too. This is one of the legends that was told by the Arabs about Abrahams. Seeing many flocks and herds, Abraham asked his mother, who is the lord of these, and she answered, your father, Terah. And who is the lord of Terah, the lad Abraham asked. Nimrod, said his mother. And who is the lord of Nimrod?, Abraham asked. His mother bade him to be quiet and not push questions too far, but already Abraham’s thoughts were reaching out to the God who is the God of all. Faith. Now here is another definition. Trusting commitment of one person to another, particularly of a person to god. Faith is the central concept of Christianity. Well, hello. One may be called a Christian only if he has faith. Our English word faith comes from the Latin, fides, which as developed through the old French words, fei, and feid in the middle English faith replaced a word that eventually evolved into belief. Faith came to mean loyalty to a person to whom one is bond by promise or duty. Faith was fidelity. Belief came to be distinguished from faith as an intellectual process having to do with the acceptance of a proposition. There is a lot of people who believe there is a God. There is less people who have faith that that God exists and that he works in our lives. Faith, trust and commitment, but most of all faith is that which is evident in your life. It is in the things you do and the way you live your life that measures your faith. Think about that one. And truly, Paul was thinking about that when he talked about all these people, when he read the roll of faith. As suggested by my title this morning, it is kind of like the listing of the Fortune 500 companies. Forbes magazine makes a list of like 500 companies that are the top ones in the industries. There are lots of names in there that you will recognize. These are companies who are successful. And these are the ones you need to watch if you want to be in the market. You watch how the stocks of these companies do. They have indexes that describe the way these companies are functioning. If you want to know what is going on in the stock market you look at those fortune 500 companies. You see what they are doing to be successful and maybe do the same things. Paul was reading us a same type of list here. He talked about Abraham. And Abraham is a very, very interesting individual. He was called by God to leave his secure surrounding in Ur and go to a place where God would show him. Give this all up. Pull up stakes and take off. And by faith, Abraham did that. He was called to a place where he would later receive his inheritance. He obeyed and went even though he did not know where he was going. How many of us start out on a trip not knowing where you are going with just the faith that you will get somewhere good? Not very often do we light out on a vacation like that, do we? Well, maybe we do. But, we plan it out and we try to take all the unknowns out of it. Faith isn’t like that. Faith makes you believe, if you will, that you are going to the right place. And faith is an active, more of a verb than it is a noun, because faith is what shows in your life each day. If you have faith that Jesus Christ gave his life on a cross for you so you could be acceptable to God, and that you will be blessed by that God, than you are going to live your life a lot differently than someone who just has faith that there is nothing out there. Then somebody who thinks at the end of their life that it is just going to be nothing. We have faith that in our father’s house there are many rooms. We have faith that Christ told us that so we could be with Him. This is the crux. This is the thing about faith that makes us different. Our faith is in a God who loves us. Who loves us beyond measure. How many times have we done things to deserve death? And how many times has Jesus intervened with God to fix it so we don’t get what we deserve. I thank God everyday that he does that. And so I try to act in my life like I am someone who is saved. I try to look at each individual that I meet as someone who is worthy of Christ dying on the cross. I have got a shirt that I wear, that is a black tee-shirt, that has a picture of Christ on the cross. And it has a question. Are you worth dying for? A good question. How about that, are you worth dying for? And down at the bottom it says, one thought so. God thought you were worth sending his son for. And we can have faith in that, brothers and sisters. We can have faith that what God says in here (the bible) is true because you can see it in those who are faithful to him. I see it in people in this church all the time. I see it in people who are drawn to this church. Because the faithful, those who are of like mind, like faith, will be drawn to each other. And luckily those who have no faith, those who do not know Christ and who are lost and wondering out here, when they see somebody that has faith like Abraham had faith that Christ would bring him to the Promise Land and that he would bless him with offspring even though he was too old to have them and his wife was past childbearing years, it was credit to him as faith that he believed what God told him. And I tell you that if you are like Abraham, if you are like that, there will be those drawn to you, those who are lost. Because they seek what God has to give. They truly do. And what he has to give is eternal life. What he has to give is the answer to the question, what comes after death. We have that treasure. We have that inside ourselves. We know, by faith. We know by faith that we will be with Him in that day. There are many rooms in God’s house. There is a mansion reserved with our name on it because of our faith. Because we believe. Because we realize that God can do things like give a baby to a lady who is eighty or ninety. We believe that God can move mountains. We believe that God can save lives. We believe that Jesus Christ can triumphant over our sins and wash us with his blood and make us clean so that we can stand in the very presence of God because we have faith in the advocate, the advocacy of Jesus Christ in our lives. And that makes all the difference. That makes all the difference in our lives. As you face each thing in your life next week, and I’m talking about the time you walk out that door, as you face everything that comes at you, and believe me there will be plenty of stuff come at you, especially if people know you are of the faith. Because they really like to make you look like you are the same as them. They will look for ways to pull you away from Him because they are jealous. Because they don’t know what is there. So it is up to us, see, to, by our faith, live so that they will want to be like us. Think about that. How much responsibility we have as the faithful in Christ, professed believers, how much responsibility we have to live for Christ. It is a tremendous responsibility. And you know, Abraham had a hard time doing that just like we do. Several different times he told people that his wife was his sister because he feared for his safety. And I think we do the same thing in our lives. We hedge. I know I do. A lot of times I try to hedge things so I can come through a lot easier without having to say, hay, I have to believe in Christ. I can’t do this because I am a Christian. That happens to us all the time. And I think we need to really realize that Abraham, even though he was the tower of faith that we see him in the bible, he was also human. That is the great thing about God is that he knows us. And he knows that we are going to trip up. And he knows we are going to have trouble. And he knows that we are going to fall short. But if we have faith in Him, then that strength will carry us through. Because it is the strength of Jesus Christ himself that voids us and picks us up when we have fallen and tells us that we are forgiven. There is a license plate that I have seen on the front of Gary’s van that says, Christians aren’t perfect, they are just forgiven. That is just the way we are, isn’t it? Faith is a hard thing. Faith is believing in something that a lot of people don’t. Faith is believing that God will work in our lives each day. And that is the hard thing, to know everyday. It is pretty easy to come here on Sunday and say, I believe God, I praise you and I thank you. But it is much harder Monday afternoon, or about hump day, to realize that indeed he is still with us and he wants us to do the right thing. And it is still hard. But know this, even on Wednesday when the week looks like it will get you down, He is there. And on the other hand, He expects us to act like the faithful. And he will credit it to us as righteousness just like He did Abraham. James tells us, faith without works is dead. And as we do those works, he will bless you. And it probably won’t be in dollars and cents. You aren’t going to see it pile in your bank account, but you will see it in another account. Because we will be judged on how faithful we are. Our salvation is complete and our salvation is locked in when we accept Jesus Christ. But we also have a responsibility to show our faith. A responsibility to work for Him and live in Him. And I’ll tell you, the blessings that come from that are not only in the next world, they will be in this world. You just have to look for them. A great deal of those blessings was around my feet this morning as we asked the children up. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to have a child? Isn’t it an awesome responsibility? Isn’t it vexing and isn’t it troublesome and isn’t it worrisome and all that? But when the little hands reach up to you and say, Mommie, I love you or Daddy, I love you, what a reward. What a tremendous thing. Something that can take you clear through the week. These are the kind of good gifts He gives His children. These are the results of faith. A faith in a God who is unseen, but all powerful and all pervasive and there for you. Believe that. Be faithful to Him in that He is here. And this is the third time I have said this, Where two or three are gathered in His name, He will be there (Matthew 18:20). And He is here today. He is sitting in a pew next to you with His arm around you because he loves you. Now all we have to do is get off our duffs and go out the door and tell everybody we meet that that is the kind of God we serve and you, too, can have that. So lets get out there and be part of the Faith 500 so that we can show others that the rating system in the economic world has nothing on us. We can be rated up there, too. I know you can do it. And I know I can do it. I point my finger at myself more so than you because I have been given a call that makes me more responsible. So, help me with that, will you? Pray for me. I’ll pray for you and together we can faithfully go out in the world and do His work and receive His blessings and others can receive His blessings, because of us, because of our faith. Know that this is true. God bless you.

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