Faith. Christians talk a lot about it. They talk about their faith walk. Faith this. Faith that. But what exactly is it? Why do we need it, when do we need it and how do we get it?

Hey, it's great to be with you again at the start of yet another week; they do slip by pretty quickly don't they? Because what we're kicking off today on the program is a series that I've called quite simply, “By Faith …” Those two words, by faith, appear over and over again in the Bible and in fact if we go to the New Testament Book of Hebrews chapter 11 we'll see that's pretty much the place where they're most densely packed together, by faith, and can I tell you something?

In the days and weeks leading up to this series of messages on faith, I've been studying and learning and preparing, as I've been doing that I've learned so much about this thing that we call faith and that's after already having written a book on the subject.

Faith, it's something that we Christians talk a lot about, it's something that Jesus talks a lot about but let me ask you this, do we really understand what faith is? Do we really know what the outcome of faith is meant to look like in our lives? They're the questions we're going to be pondering, exploring, journeying through together over these next few weeks on the program starting with today.

Okay then, so what exactly is faith? Well I suppose many of the people listening today, perhaps you're one of them, would point me to Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1 to answer that question. It says:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

Well and good, that's the most concise definition of faith in the Bible, that's the stock standard answer, tickety-boo who needs a series on faith? We know what it is, it's:

The assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

But as much as we Christians quote that verse and it is one of the most quoted verses of the Bible, do you really understand the context in which it was written? Look at it again, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

So what's that word now doing at the front of the verse? What's that all about? Well it's called a conjunctive. In other words it ties this verse back to what's just come immediately before. So this verse doesn't stand on its own, there's a context, there's something that comes before this that we need to get in order really to understand this verse.

So what comes before? Well here it is, the previous chapter, Hebrews chapter 10 and we'll start back at verse 26. Listen carefully because we're going to unpack this in a moment. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26:

For if we wilfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin but a fearful prospect of judgement and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has violated the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses, how much worse punishment do you think would be deserved by those who've spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace?

For we know the one who said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay' and again, 'The Lord will judge his people'. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God but recall those earlier days when after you'd been enlightened you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution and sometimes partners with those so treated.

For you had compassion for those who were imprisoned and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions knowing that you yourselves possess something better and more lasting.

Do not therefore abandon that confidence of yours, it brings a great reward. For you need endurance so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while the one who is coming will come and will not delay but my righteous one will live by faith.

My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back but we are not amongst those who shrink back and so are lost but among those who have faith and so are saved.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen."

You see the context? The context is two things, the punishment that will surely come if we reject God's grace and mercy and continue on in sin and the second part is about the extreme trials that we're bound to face in life. In fact the Hebrew believers, the people who were reading this particular letter, were facing incredible trials at the time.

They were being persecuted like you wouldn't believe and so the writer of this letter is saying, guys you know something, you're going to struggle with sin in your life and you're going to face incredible trials and so what you need, both those cases, what you really need is faith.

Can I tell you the truth? If you put it like that frankly I'd rather be in a situation where I don't need any faith because faith is what we need when we're battling sin; faith is what we need when we're in a dangerous uncertain place; faith is what we need to be saved from something that we can't save ourselves from; to persevere through situations and ordeals and trials and persecution; to make it out to the other side of something that we'd rather not be in the middle of.

Hey wouldn't it be so much better from where you and I sit, if we didn't end up in places where we actually needed faith because faith is the assurance of something that we hope for which by definition means that what we hope for we don't have right at this moment and we wish we did.

And faith is the evidence of that thing that we can't see yet because all we can see is the circumstances we're not hoping so much more for and yet as we're going to see in the coming days that's exactly how God set things up.

You have sin in your life, I have sin in my life that in and of ourselves we simply can't get rid of it, not only can we not get rid of the sin we can't get rid of the consequences. We've struggled with it for years, we couldn't do anything about it until we started putting our faith in Jesus.

We couldn't overcome the sin or set things right until we started to trust in Jesus and the same is true of the many obstacles we face in life. Perhaps you're someone who's been listening to this program for a while and you're thinking to yourself, "That Berni guy, man he seems to have it all sorted out, what an easy life he has, he gets to just sit there on the radio and talk with us and tells us how it all works."

But you wouldn't believe the challenges and the trials involved in getting out there and doing what Gods called us to do here at Christianityworks. The attacks that come against the ministry because Satan doesn't want people to hear about Jesus, he doesn't want us doing what we're doing.

The trials when people fail, when finances are tight, when ... well, you name it. It's either happened or it's going to happen and just in the same way you face trials and temptations, you have mountains that get in your road and stop you from doing things God's called you to do. You have sickness and struggles and people come against you and financial issues and my friend that's what faith is for.

Faith is the assurance of the things we hope for and the evidence of things we can't see. You and I, we need faith, that's why we're going to be talking about it over these coming days and weeks. Faith moves mountains; faith gets us through things we'd rather not be in. You and I have some things in our lives that we can't tackle, that's why we need faith.