By Pastor Joel Lawler

Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Faith is not an easy thing to hold on to. It takes a willingness to believe that there is something bigger than we can grasp with our hands or know with our minds. Faith cannot be proved in a lab or drawn out as an equation on a chalk board. Even the brightest minds have to put all their intellect aside to have faith. Faith is a part of our everyday lives. I put faith in people I do not know and have never met when I get behind the wheel of a car. I have to have faith that the person driving the other direction will not swerve their car into my lane. Sometimes they do. Faith is taking a calculated risk. Faith most always is anchored to knowledge. I have faith that if I walk up to a biker dude and punch him in the head that he is going to make it a very unpleasant day for me. It does not take a whole lot of faith to envision that scenario. There is plenty of knowledge to back up the premise.

Our faith in God needs to be anchored to the scriptures that He has given us. His scriptures are reliable and true. We can rely on them and turn to them in times of uncertainty. The scriptures have been scrutinized and vetted many times and have stood the test of scholars and skeptics. It takes faith to believe that they are God inspired but being that they have stood up to harsh criticism, it also takes faith to believe that the scriptures are not true. For me, it takes a whole lot less faith to accept them as God's words to us.

There are many religions and ideas about God that are not tied to anything other than someone's imagination. These ideas are not rooted in truth. The person who creates these ideas, is in a sense, creating his or her own God. They choose to rely on their own knowledge and experiences as a guide to who God is rather than trust something outside of themselves. God does use our experiences to introduce Himself to us. These experiences are incredible but if they contradict the Bible, those experiences are not from Him or we are misinterpreting them.

I believe in the God found in the Bible. I believe that He gave us the Bible so we could know Him and have something to build our faith on. He reveals Himself in many ways. One of the most obvious for me is nature. A beautiful sunset always reminds me that the master artist has been at work. I see God's work in my kids. They are such incredible little people (they get that from their mom).

Some claim that they see God in things that are not consistent with His character that is in the Bible. They also claim to be Christians. I don't understand those who claim to be a "Christian" or a follower of Jesus Christ but hold views that contradict the Bible. What are they anchoring their faith to?

The Bible has been misused. History is full of examples of atrocities committed by people claiming to be following the Bible. There are also many people today who use the Bible as a tool to manipulate others.

They take some parts of the Bible and use them out of context. This abuse is no doubt evil. Jesus spoke very harshly about those who use religion for their own self interest.

There are those who go to the extreme of almost worshiping the Bible as if it were the fourth member of the trinity. The Bible points us to God but it is not God. Some worship their religion or elements of their religion and miss God entirely.
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