Fully Persuaded

BY Matthew Fischer

he word faith is closely related to the word believing. Perhaps our faith was shaky at times because we didn’t have enough information to actually believe it.

Here is the difference. Believing is an “is”— much like arithmetic or true science. We don’t struggle with the possibility that there is some other explanation for 2 + 2 = 4, for example. Or that when we plant tomatoes, we get tomatoes.

It doesn’t keep us, or the neighbors, awake. We all believe in those universal truths. When you think of it, we carry out the act of believing a thousand times a day. We don’t check the legs of chairs before we sit down. We don’t check under the hood every time we start our car.

Faith = Pistis in the Greek Believing = Pisteuo in the Greek.

ABRAM, A CASE STUDY IN ACTIVE FAITH

God gave Abram a promise, His word.

“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.’

“But Abram said, ‘Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ Then Abram said, ‘Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!’

“And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.’  Then He brought him outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’

“And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:1-6, NKJV).

Righteousness can be defined as the God-given ability to stand before God without any sense of sin, guilt, or condemnation.

Abram believed against all odds.

“Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he [God] had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness” (Romans 4:18-22, KJV).

He was convinced beyond any doubt.

As above, we already know how to believe many things in our daily lives beyond any doubt.

Faith in God the Father and Son Works for Us Too

“Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:23-25, KJV).

“Fully persuaded,” to me, is the very best definition of believing. There is no room for anything else. It is an “is.”

MATTHEW FISCHER has devoted more than 40 years to Biblical teaching and research. A former foreign missionary, he has taken his gifts as a spiritual counselor to a state prison for weekend studies, and has been successful in inspiring incarcerated individuals toward a new perspective using the Bible.