Principles of Livng Life as A Believer!

The life of the believer is governed by three supreme and interconnected principles.  A believer is characterized by an expectant hope for the future fulfillment of an unrealized promise.  A believer by nature is hopeful and forward looking.  It is the expectation of a promise fulfilled that drives the believer on through the gauntlet of obstacles, setback, challenges, critics and defeat.  The believer is a dreamer, a person of unique character who is held steady by the gravitational pull of their hope for a promise.

The Pull Of Promise in The Believer’s Life

The believer is kept by the promise.  The believer is empowered by the promise.  Where the promise is obscured, the belief withers and dies. For this reason alone, we discover that vision is more powerful than sight.  There is an unwritten law that rules every living human being; “When one’s behavior changes, look to their beliefs for the answer.” 

We are all powered by promise. It is the promise of a first kiss that emboldens us to risk rejection. It is for the promise of a better lifestyle that we endure the rigors of academic study.  Our degree is our key that unlocks the guarded passageways of professional promise.   The promise of eternal life prompts our profession of faith in Christ. 

Where there is no promise, there is no hope.

Promise: The Fountain from Which Hope Springs Eternal

The life of a believer is moored by the hope which remains focused upon the promise.  It is hope that keeps the believer warm when distance and time separate them from the fulfilled promise.  Hope is the natural state of life; it is the substance of childhood visions of Christmas morning, the joy that overwhelms the wedding day, which draws tears from the well of newborn parent’s eyes.  Hope springs eternal from the fountain of promise. 

The believer is a teller of futures hoped for; the pursuer of fortunes unseen, yet experienced vividly with every waking and many sleeping moments.  This is the substance of Hope.  The writer of Hebrews says “Faith is the substance of things Hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Hope is the compass pointing to the promise and faith is the power which drives us to it.

Faith: The Present Reality of A Steadfast Hope

Too often faith and belief are confused.  They are not synonymous.  Faith is the act of pursuing the hope.  Faith is the single irrefutable form of evidence that one is a believer.  Faith is not what you believe; it is what you do and who you become because you believe.  Faith is the practice of your belief.  As such, Faith is a verb.  It is what you do that moves you ever closer to the hoped for thing that signals fulfillment of the promise.

We hear the writer of the New Testament book, Hebrews, echo this same truth as he writes in chapter 11, “By faith Abel offered…, By faith Enoch was taken…, By faith Noah…built, By faith Abraham…obeyed and went.  Each of their ‘acts’ of faith and others were focused upon a hope.  Hope steadies those who live the life of a believer and endure. 

Faith is the power to pursue the hope and overtake the promise. 

The life of a believer is an expectant and hope filled life, guided by the principles inherent in their belief: Faith empowers the believer to pursue the hope which inspires the believer to overtake the promise. These three principles form the substance of the believer’s life.  

Our Lives As Believers

The life of the believer is governed by three supreme and interconnected principles.  A believer is characterized by an expectant hope for the future fulfillment of an unrealized promise.  A believer by nature is hopeful and forward looking.  It is the expectation of a promise fulfilled that drives the believer on through the gauntlet of obstacles, setback, challenges, critics and defeat.  The believer is a dreamer, a person of unique character who is held steady by the gravitational pull of their hope for a promise.

The Pull Of Promise in The Believer’s Life

The believer is kept by the promise.  The believer is empowered by the promise.  Where the promise is obscured, the belief withers and dies. For this reason alone, we discover that vision is more powerful than sight.  There is an unwritten law that rules every living human being; “When one’s behavior changes, look to their beliefs for the answer.” 

We are all powered by promise. It is the promise of a first kiss that emboldens us to risk rejection. It is for the promise of a better lifestyle that we endure the rigors of academic study.  Our degree is our key that unlocks the guarded passageways of professional promise.   The promise of eternal life prompts our profession of faith in Christ. 

Where there is no promise, there is no hope.

Promise: The Fountain from Which Hope Springs Eternal

The life of a believer is moored by the hope which remains focused upon the promise.  It is hope that keeps the believer warm when distance and time separate them from the fulfilled promise.  Hope is the natural state of life; it is the substance of childhood visions of Christmas morning, the joy that overwhelms the wedding day, which draws tears from the well of newborn parent’s eyes.  Hope springs eternal from the fountain of promise. 

The believer is a teller of futures hoped for; the pursuer of fortunes unseen, yet experienced vividly with every waking and many sleeping moments.  This is the substance of Hope.  The writer of Hebrews says “Faith is the substance of things Hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Hope is the compass pointing to the promise and faith is the power which drives us to it.

Faith: The Present Reality of A Steadfast Hope

Too often faith and belief are confused.  They are not synonymous.  Faith is the act of pursuing the hope.  Faith is the single irrefutable form of evidence that one is a believer.  Faith is not what you believe; it is what you do and who you become because you believe.  Faith is the practice of your belief.  As such, Faith is a verb.  It is what you do that moves you ever closer to the hoped for thing that signals fulfillment of the promise.

We hear the writer of the New Testament book, Hebrews, echo this same truth as he writes in chapter 11, “By faith Abel offered…, By faith Enoch was taken…, By faith Noah…built, By faith Abraham…obeyed and went.  Each of their ‘acts’ of faith and others were focused upon a hope.  Hope steadies those who live the life of a believer and endure. 

Faith is the power to pursue the hope and overtake the promise. 

The life of a believer is an expectant and hope filled life, guided by the principles inherent in their belief: Faith empowers the believer to pursue the hope which inspires the believer to overtake the promise. These three principles form the substance of the believer’s life.  

Discipleship: Raising the Standard

Discipleship implies and presupposes that both a master and a clearly defined discipline exist. In order for a discipline to be engaged there must be a vision or a dream of what the followers of the discipline will accomplish in their lives.

Perhaps a further illustration will make this issue clear. Let’s suppose that a married couple decide to have a child. When the wife becomes pregnant she decides that she will stop smoking because of the potentially negative effect that it will have on the unborn child. The discipline that is required is only really possible because the pain of staying the same became greater than the pain of change. It is this principle that moves us to claim any discipline, it is the dream of some greater thing that the discipline will make available to us by being obedient to the vision.

Proverbs 16:26 tells us, “It is good for workers to have an appetite; an empty stomach drives them on.”

The writer of Hebrews teaches powerful truths that will either disciple us or we can ignore and fail to reap the benefit of God’s Wisdom as revealed in it. As disciples we must ask ourselves, who will be our master, in other words, by what discipline will I live and thrive? The issue is one of whose leadership will I accept over my life.

Paul tells us in Philippians 3: 7& 8 that he counts all things that were important to him as unimportant “in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”. Paul goes on to write that:

“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No, dear friends, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus is calling us up to heaven. (NLT)

Here we find Paul describing his striving to reach the end. Paul is revealing a principle of growth and development in that he tells us that we too must stretch and grow into greater responsibility. Paul also reminds us to not allow the past to define our future, but to inform our future. It is in this idea, of looking forward, that we find the standard that Paul makes later reference to.

The New American Standard Bible translates Philippians 3:16 in the following way: “...however let us keep living by that standard to which we have attained.” The standard of the discipled life is the life of Jesus Christ, but not only the life, it is the entire Christ event from birth through death and resurrection continuing into His resurrected Lordship. With Christ Jesus as the standard by which we live then the words that He spoke have new meaning for each disciple as we make progress in growth through the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says in John 12:32, “And when I am lifted up on the Cross, I will draw everyone to myself.” Here we find the standard of self-giving Love being raised as the standard of discipled relationships. It will be this act of love that we as disciples will hold up to the world as the model or standard of true redeeming, life giving love. It is the model of God giving His Life for a rebellious, hateful, bunch of children to save their lives that will draw men and women to Christ.

This love must manifest itself in the way that disciples love one another, because it is the standard of continuing discipleship. So if we are to raise a banner, a standard above our camp to clearly identify the rule and law of our community as all standards are raised to do. Let us make the empty cross the standard that we raise, representing the Love of God in the sinless life, death, resurrection and Lordship of Jesus the Christ.