Faith Beyond Belief
What is the relationship between faith and belief? Are they the same? What, if any, is the difference between faith and belief? How do we cultivate one or the other or both? The readings this week (below) offer some helpful guidelines for growing in faith in ways that transcend mere belief. In preparation for our discussion, you are invited to reflect on your faith journey. Have you ever had an experience in which you acted on what may have initially seemed like a mere hunch but, once acted upon, turned out to be something much larger?
I look forward to hearing from those of you who may be willing to share firsthand accounts of the ways in which your faith has grown and the experiences that fostered your growth. Hearing from one another is one of the primary ways we grow both personally and corporately (as the Body of Christ).
James 2:14-18
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can [such] faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
18 But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith.
John 14:15-21
15 ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’
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