From http://defendingcontending.com/ 
There is a good post on what is true faith vs. false faith on the blog, ‘Defending. Contending.’ blog.
Genuine-or-false-faith-by-Steven-Cole
There is a sermon (it’s really a Bible study, Evangelicals never seem to understand the difference) by Pastor Steven Cole of Flagstaff, AZ that goes through all of this with the goal of helping us to know true faith from false faith. I don’t really think he accomplished what he set out to do. In fact I think he may just have poured a little more gasoline on that fire.
At least they are asking the right questions.
They are coming up with the wrong conclusions…but at least they are asking the right questions.
What do you think?
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TThanks to Stephen Poff and Flickr for the photo.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenpoff/2870710191/
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Filed under: Faith |
The Old Adam Lives! 
Do I believe? Do I believe that I believe? Do I have saving faith? Is my faith real?
“Lord I believe. But, help thou my unbelief.”
Why is it Christians want to look inward and miss the point with this type of question?
Faith is trust in someone, not in something. And it is a gift of God, not a work, not something I produce. I refuse to make it into law and get wrapped up around the axle and dragged.
I was struck by my firstgrade son’s effort in his prayer writing homework assignment: “Jesus, remember me. Thank you for saving me. – Adam”
Unless you enter the Kingdom of God like a little child, you will never enter it. Faith is THAT simple and it is something that comes solely by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.
I think unless you “get it” piped in to you in preaching of the gospel, in absolution, in baptism, in the Supper, then you must fall back and ask the question, have *I* really “got it in me?” It’s about Jesus “for me” rather than Jesus “in me” that counts.
Any discussion of the topic of saving faith that frames it in terms of a “lifeboat” issue – in other words: as an answer to the question: “What’s it going take to get our butts into heaven?” – is flawed and much too narrow from the start.
Sure, claiming faith and actually having faith are not the same and may need to be addressed if the two don’t match. But that discussion and distinction in itself does not create faith, it can at best reveal some self-deception.
Faith, in my understanding, is relational at heart and created by God reaching out to us and finding us in our lostness. Where this actually happens, a dichotomy between faith and works ceases to be a real issue. If I truly love someone, it will show. And I don’t have to constantly ask for proofs of the genuineness of that love either.