What Do You Hear?

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

1 John 3:1-2

When the world honors you for your faith in God, you should be troubled and very afraid! Genuine faith in God is not seen as a good thing by the kingdom of this world. When you are honored by the world for your Christianity, you should immediately examine your relationship with God to see if it is authentic.

Non believers are capable of honoring you for your good works, but they have no way of examining and evaluating your faith.

So how do I know that my faith in God is real? If I depend on the evaluation of other believers I know that they can be deceived because they don’t know my every thought.

Real faith comes from hearing God’s Word! Your heart comes to accept and believe in what you hear. When people hear a lie repeated over and over they come to believe it. Their “faith” in the lie comes from hearing it over and over. When we hear the truth repeatedly we also believe it! That is why Satan fights hard to keep the Word of God out of the market place, our schools, and our government. Hearing God’s Word produces faith in the hearers.

Real faith is not hoping that something is true. Faith is the “evidence of things not seen.” There are many things that I have not seen, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are real and true.

If you are being honored for your righteousness by those who are unrighteous, there is something very wrong with that story. If you are being persecuted for your faith, take heart. That is what happened to the Lord Himself. Jesus is the benchmark for everything in life. Measure your life against His. Measure your thoughts and words against those of Jesus. Pay no attention to the other voices. It is only the voice of Jesus that deserves your attention. Then you will grow in faith and become strong in the Lord!