Belief and Faith

So last night I was talking to one of my friends pastor's while doing homework at my friends house. And he was talking about this book about liturgical fallacies that we believe as truth. One of the one's that he was talking about was belief and faith. He told a story about a preacher giving a sermon in Germany. The preacher spoke English and was differentiating belief and faith, but about half-way through his sermon he noticed that the translator was using the same word for belief and faith. He stopped and asked the translator why he wasn't translating correctly. The translator responded with, "Belief and faith are the same word in German."

The fallacy is that belief and faith are separated, they are not tied together in some way. But in reality, they are the same thing.

Having this new found truth, I embarked upon my daily Bible study in the book Be Transformed, by Scope Ministries. The Bible study group I'm doing it with calls it the "Book of Pain." Mostly because it is a self-examining book, where you really look at the root of your belief system about how you view yourself and God. Anyways, this week's lesson is about learning about how you view yourself. Today's specifically was looking at the lies that you believe about yourself, and the truth that God says in His words that contradict your beliefs. Then God gave me a revalation about that! The lies that we believe as truths are things that we put our FAITH in. We put stock in them to where we expect them to happen. And when they do, our belief/faith is strengthened because "faith without deeds is dead." Yeah, my mind was pretty much blown out of my brain at this point. I just don't understand how all this time, I was under the influence that this wasn't the case. When the Father talks about faith without deeds is dead, he's also talking about beliefs. Each belief that we hold is held there simply because we've SEEN IT HAPPEN. Again, faith/belief without deeds is dead. But when the deed is there, our faith in it becomes stronger. And we are more likely to hold to that belief even more so now.

CRAZY, RIGHT?!?!

But when our perspective is changed, as in this case, it is in our best interest to wait on the Lord and let him change our heart in it. It's not a time to say, "Well, now that I have a new perspective, I want to change." That's not at all what he wants us to do. He wants us to allow him to change our hearts because of that new perspective that we are given. He wants us to let it take root in our hearts, which in turn will change our behavior, our attitude, our thought process in more ways than one. AND we won't even realize it until it's already done. We have nothing to worry about it then. We just let him do it. Plus it's SO much easier that way. Like the old cliche says, "Let go, let God."