2 Timothy 4 Verse 7: ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” {NKJV}

The word used in the New Testament for ‘faith’ is ‘Pistis’, which is commonly used to express “the state of believing on basis of reliability of the trusted one”. It can also mean ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’.

That doesn’t mean the hope that something is true, or the wish that something would be true. Faith is not associated with wishful thinking. It is a trust that our Christian beliefs are something we can know for certain.

The above scripture verse was talking about Paul, when he was coming to the end of his earthly life. Paul was knock to the ground,  {Acts 9 v 12} on his way to persecute Christians and He had an encounter with Risen The Lord. His life was changed forever. Our salvation experience, should also be an encounter with the Risen Lord, and not just a prayer we say.

We use faith in everyday situations and probably think nothing of it. If we have ever flown, we trusted the plane and the pilot to take us up in the air in a heavy piece of equipment and to get us down again. There are many times in the day when we need to use faith, just to get around.

But the Christian Faith, is experiential faith, trusting and growing in The Risen Lord. When someone says they believe in Jesus because they ‘have faith’, they are making the mistake of thinking that faith is a way of knowing something. Faith is simply trusting in what someone has good reason to believe.

It is clear that the Bible does not call us to have blind faith, it call us to have a knowing and growing faith, The more we know, the more our faith, our convictions in the truth of our  beliefs and witness, can grow.

We are all going to depart to this earthly life, to continue living in an eternal life. What a great testimony it would be if we can declare like the Apostle Paul, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”. because I know and have been growing in My Lord and My Friend, into the destiny He has for me.

God Bless. OFJ.