Reading Hebrews 11 aloud is impacting. Faith’s ‘Hall of Fame’ highlights significant spiritual heroes and their achievements. Yet first and foremost it impacts because absolutely everything that is achieved in the Kingdom of God is attained by faith and by faith alone. This is also our experience; by faith we trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, by faith we receive the baptism of the Spirit, by faith we receive the love of the Father, by faith and by faith alone. Abraham features heavily in the Hall of Fame. He’s credited for believing God for a promised land, for his son Isaac and for figuratively receiving said son back from the grave. Genesis & Romans highlight him as the ‘Father of our Faith’, the pioneer of righteousness by faith alone.

When we read that ‘without faith it’s impossible to please God’, it could be construed to communicate a need to perform to gain God’s approval. But there is actually a much deeper and more beautiful truth. Every human father, indeed every expression of mothering and fathering, ultimately find their origin in our Eternal Father. By comparison, fathers such as Abraham and his compatriots are mere types or shadows, temporal reflections of his eternal nature – the One who is the primordial ‘Father of our Faith’. Indeed everything our heavenly Father does is by faith – it’s his nature and reality. Sending his Son was an act of faith and even creation was formed by faith at his command, ‘so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible’; because faith is ‘the evidence of things unseen.’ He’s not asking us do do anything which he has not first done himself, and the deeper and more beautiful truth is his desire that we would join him in his adventure of faith.

On one level we can speak of Abraham’s journey of faith from the land of Haran to Canaan, but our Eternal Father is on an incredible journey of faith right into our very hearts. Indeed to reciprocate is the greatest adventure of all – not a missions adventure to Timbuktu or even raising the dead, but an everlasting pilgrimage of faith into the very heart, life and love of God. To live by faith is ultimately to embrace an invitation to plumb the depths of his nature and reality.

When I taught our two daughters to drive in Malaysia I would sit in the passenger seat with one hand hovering above the handbrake, the other hand pinned to my side but ready to grab the steering wheel and my feet occasionally jabbing the non-existent pedals on the floor in front on me. What caused me to do this? Fear. To allow the substance of faith to dwell in our hearts is to yield to Perfect Love, a Love that uproots and displaces fear, sowing mountain-moving seeds of faith in its place. Perfect Love allows us to see who Father really is – that everything in his faith-filled heart towards us is not just good but the very, very highest. Faith releases us from the confines of our own resources and ability, providing access to his unlimited love, life, resources and capacity. Faith allows him to be in the driving seat and us to relinquish control, sit back, relax and enjoy his unfolding adventure.

For much of my Christian journey my focus was on having faith for different goals, people, events or financial targets. Particularly in the early years a lot of my prayer life focused on faith for imminent financial needs. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that in my heart I couldn’t accept that I had a Father who loved me, one who delights to provide for me. In my blindness I could only envisage a God who was at best reticent to provide, someone who needed to be convinced of my worth through my faith and service.

His Love changed all of this. What I have come to see is that it is not ‘faith for’ but ‘faith in’. It’s not faith for something but faith in someOne so much bigger than ourselves. In February last year I woke in the early hours of the morning to discover that we owed the Malaysian Government an additional £20,000 in capital gains tax from the sale of our house, money that we had no means of paying. The letter also indicated that for every 30 days that this debt remained outstanding we would owe an additional 10%. In the past this would have sent me into a frantic tailspin – I would probably have woken Nia up and begun extended prayer and fasting, wracking my brain for a solution to the crisis. But his unveiled Love has changed all that. This time my immediate reaction was to laugh and say to Papa: ‘Well I can’t wait to see how you are going solve this one!’ Then I turned over and went straight back to sleep. This might appear like taking him for granted, but it’s actually the difference between having ‘faith for’ something and having ‘faith in’ a Loving Father. ‘Faith for’ so often involves the exercise of fervent ‘spiritual’ discipline, ‘faith in’ flows from a place of rest – in this case a good night’s sleep tucked into Father’s bosom. Over the course of the next few days Father provided a way for us to make that impossible payment, but He didn’t stop there, because four weeks later he arranged for the Malaysian Government to refund most of it back to us despite our solicitor insisting that that was impossible! Exactly!

As faith is integral to Father’s reality, his desire is that that same faith will live and flourish in us. Paul wrote to his ‘son’ Timothy of his conviction that the same depth of faith that was manifest in Timothy’s mother and grandmother now also lived in Timothy. Faith is alive and vibrant. Jesus demonstrates for us the active faith-filled heart of a Son. His journey of active faith from equality with God, to helpless babe in Bethlehem, to misunderstood Messiah, to gruesome crucifixion and three days in the depths of hell is an amazing display of ‘faith in’ not ‘faith for.’ When Pontius Pilate asserted that Jesus’ life or death were in his hands, Jesus rebuked him with the words, ‘you would have no power over me lest it be given to you from above.’ His faith in Father was rock-solid, concrete. Jesus had no capacity to raise himself from the pit of hell, instead he trusted himself fully into the hands of ‘the One who could save him from death’, one who then highly exalted him into the place of greatest intimacy. In this Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith, revealing the radical extent to which we can fully embrace the purposes and heart of the Father of our Faith, adventuring with him and allowing faith to live and grow within.