Today, I am going to talk about faith. It is what makes Christianity a pursuit and not an applied religious philosophy. The dictionary defines faith as loyalty, trust and belief. The Bible first talks about the faith Abram. He was called by God to leave his people and homeland to go to a place that God promised to show him. There wasn’t a lot of detail, but loyalty, trust and belief that God was going to do what he said.

Moses, too, was met in a wilderness place. God told him, through a burning bush, to say a difficult thing to a difficult man. The path of faith is often not something easy and the outcomes aren’t always clear at the beginning. It was in response to prayers of the Israelites in bondage that Moses was sent. Answers to prayers often come in the form of people.

Even though the Israelites were saved, the people still made a lot of mistakes and they wandered around in the desert for forty years before arriving at their promised destination. When faith is weak, the path is often long and arduous.

The early church referred itself as The Way. Jesus had called his disciples to follow him. While the goal of many leaders is to establish dominance through strength and physical force, Jesus was different. He healed the sick, fed the hungry and reached out to the margins of society. His disciples included women and men of ill repute. His charge was to love and to care for others. Service was his method of leadership. Kindness was his road to redemption. Forgiveness was the key to his kingdom.

How do we make faith a part of our lives today? First of all, faith is a person. We don’t just jump out of the boat on our own, we follow Jesus out on the water and keep our eyes on him. He is leading is to new places to do new things.

Secondly, we don’t walk the path of faith alone. Abram traveled with Sarai, Moses approached the Pharaoh with his brother Aaron, and Jesus surrounded himself with the twelve and the women. The apostles were sent out in pairs.

Thirdly, our path of faith leads us to the lost. The shepherd left the 99 sheep to find the one. The body of the church is made of the believers. Paul describes the importance and value of every person for the function of the whole. We exclude others to our own detriment. No person is insignificant.

Finally, we are to have the faith of a child, full of hope, trust and love. Faith is vulnerable, but without her we are truly lost.