Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

The essential of the Christian life is saving Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  All flows from the head.  Yet, when it comes to walking it out, many come to the table with many of their own ideas, and notions, and feelings about how church and the Christian life can and should be.

Consider, for a moment, though, the covenant Israel had with God, before the cross.  They could not dress, eat, behave, or throw away their refuse like any other nation.  They had strict ceremonial behavior they had to adhere to, being clean or unclean, and certain offenses had to be atoned for through sacrifice, the blood of an animal, or for the worse of the crimes, they had to be either cast out of the community or destroyed entirely.  Even the land itself had to be considered, that they might not bring sin upon the land (Deuteronomy 24:4).

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Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

Faith is the substance, the spiritual substructure or foundation of a thing, that if you have it, you have it, you have the actual thing in spiritual form.  While hope is relative to the future, faith is always a “Now” thing.  Because to have the substance of the thing is to have it in actuality, while the manifestation of the material or appearance of a thing may be yet forthcoming, the presence of faith, the presence of the thing in the Spirit, is the same as having it in the natural.  True faith, when it is real faith, and it is not ever wrong.  If the thing does not appear, either keep waiting, you got off faith, or it was not faith in the first place.

However, faith is not only the substance of a thing hoped for, it is also the proof of a thing.  This is important also to know.  While the faith is the presence of a thing, simply to have faith is proof that it is so.  You cannot have God’s kind of faith in a lie, and because “faith” and “wrong”  cannot happen in the same place at the same time, you will never have faith in a non-thing.  Faith cannot be attached to a fantasy.  Faith, goes beyond substance to the evidence and proof that something is.

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They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Acts 2:42

After the day of Pentecost, after the outpouring of the Spirit, and after the 3000 who were saved in an afternoon through Peter’s stand and preaching, this short verse describes what they considered important.

This verse has several similar to it in the New Testament, as a word study on such words as “devoted” demonstrates, but it is the first, listing four parts that were what they “devoted themselves to”.  Whether it was an exhaustive list is not the point, but simply that these four were important enough to be mentioned.

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