Faith HEARS and ACTS

The message Nate preached yesterday was a great message on faith. It was so simple: Faith is HEARING from God and DOING what He said. Hearing and Doing. Most of us know that faith comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17), but sometimes it's unclear to us on how to RELEASE that faith. During the message yesterday the Holy Spirit put it to me this way: Faith comes by hearing; faith is released by doing. We must do what God is telling us to do so that our faith will actually work! It's clear in James 1:22, faith without works is DEAD, but the man who acts on what he hears is blessed (James 1:25)!

True faith does what it hears regardless of the circumstances.

Faith is complete only when it is acted upon.

A good example of this would be Rahab. In Joshua, it talks about how Rahab and her people had heard of the great works that the God of Israel had done. She made her statement of faith in Joshua 2:11, "for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath." This same woman who is an idol-serving harlot hears about the one true God and changes what she believes after she hears about the God of Israel! She made a decision to ACT on what she believed, risking her very life to hide the two Israelite spies. She took them at their word (which was really God's word to her) and DID what they said by hanging the scarlet cord out her window.

Just as she believed, her and her family and her possesions were spared and she lived with the Israleites from that day forward. This is almost like being saved Old Testament style, getting to live with and become a part of God's chosen people! Her reward of hearing and DOING what she heard didn't stop there. By ACTING in faith, she positioned herself right in the geneology of Jesus! She became the great-grandma to king David! She went from being a forced prostitute serving idols, to becoming an ancestor of the Saviour through an ACT of faith!

What will our acting on what we hear do for us? Let's find out!