Look carefully at these passages:

Substance defined: "The real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence."

The Holman Christian Bible translation puts it this way:

Jesus said it like this:

This is the test that all Christians must face.  God's power is real, and He is faithful to His word for He cannot lie.  The promises that He has made to you and me are real and true.  They are available to us, and through them we become partakers of His divine nature.  Remember from 2 Peter 1 that this is pointed out; "He (God) has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.  God has a plan at work in your life as His child that will work for your good.  But, you need to get in on His plan and not make your plans of greater importance.  There is a process at work that invites us to make His power and promises a reality in our life, for we need a reality and not just wishful thinking, right?  This "God reality" changes our life for the good.  But the question is, "What part do I play?"  Our part is to grasp God's promises with our belief in Him and those promises, and this makes His promises a reality.  Let's explore what faith andbelief looks like a little more for there is a difference, and as well a connection.

Faith is the noun form and believe is the verb form of the same Greek word used in this scripture.  What does this mean?  It means that our belief is our faith in action.  Faith is a tangible reality.  What we hope for is assured.  Belief makes this hoped for reality a real life reality in our life.  This action on our part is a process of receiving the reality of God's power and His promises into our life.  But we cannot be passive with our faith and hope that it will be done.  Faith always requires action for it is also an action word.

Believing is to receive the substance (reality) of our hope by making supportive actions consistent with our hope. Believing is accepting and choosing to act based on God's power and reality instead of responding to the perceived realities around us. (Did I mention that we must walk on that bridge if we believe it will support us?)  Now I know we cannot deny the realities of this world, for there are physical and practical laws that are true.  But we must make a choice to count the reality of the object of our faith (Jesus) more real than the perceived realities of this world.  (Did I mention that true faith causes us to walk in some scary places to prove the claims being made?)

There is a process that moves God's reality and power into our world from His world.  Call it a key.  Call it a transportation device.  Whatever it is called or however it is seen, it is the reality of our faith becoming real through our practice that God's promises are true and real to us.  It is not denying this world's realities, but rather choosing to count faith's reality as more real to us than those others.

The Apostle Paul said it this way:

Fixing our eyes on the reality of what God does and can do is the spiritual discipline that a disciple must adopt so that the false realities of this world fade out.  Let me give you an example:

When I lived on the Gulf Coast, I owned an offshore fishing boat.  When fishing in the Gulf, I was prone to getting seasick when I fixed my eyes on things in the boat and when the boat was being tossed about by the waves.  To counter this condition, I would lift my eyes from the things I was doing in the boat and fix them on a stable object such as the shoreline or lighthouse.  Then my seasick condition would pass.  In the same way, we must fix our eyes (belief) on our Lighthouse (Jesus) to transfer His power and promises to our life.  Our world (reality) is being tossed about like being in a nauseating seasick condition.  But Jesus' world and His promises become our reality when we have faith in Him and believe in His promises.  We then experience the benefit of His reality.  We choose to fix our belief of the realities of what the world can do to us and for us or we choose fix our belief on the reality of the promises God has given to us.  It is our choice to make.  It is as simple as that.  How do you choose?

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