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us, “If you are ready to eat, I’m ready to feed you.” We never
have to overcome God’s reluctance. We always have to lay
hold of His infinite willingness.

Let me introduce what I’d like to look at now. It’s such a large
theme, that’s it’s almost impossible to do it in one lesson. The
foundation that I want to discuss is faith; what it means to trust
the Lord. How can we trust the Lord? I have some verses to
illustrate why this is very important. Hebrews 11:6, “And
without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes
to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
those who seek Him.” Romans 14:23, “But he who doubts is
condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and
whatever is not from faith is sin.” 2 Corinthians 5:7, “For we
walk by faith, not by sight…” Galatians 3:11, “Now that no
one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, ‘The
righteous man shall live by faith.’” All of that is to say faith is
very important. If you don’t have it, you can’t please God.
Faith is reckoned as righteousness.

If you tried to study faith in the Bible you would see how large
that is. We could talk about faith as a gift from God. We could
talk about God being the author and finisher of faith. We could
discuss how it’s reckoned as righteousness. We could talk
about it being “the substance of things hoped for and evidence
of things not seen.” We could talk about “mustard seed” faith.
We could relate faith to works. We could talk about the
difference between faith and presumption. We could contrast it
with the law. You get the idea.

Faith is not defined in the Bible. It’s described in many ways
but it is not defined; faith is looking, faith is trusting, faith is
eating, faith is drinking, faith is receiving, faith is abiding. It’s
so big that it’s hard to say, “This is the foundation.” So, I
thought I would share two stories with you. The first story, in
my understanding, describes what faith is and what it is not.