Hebrews 11:1 – Verse of the Day 4/1/14

If you ask a person who knows about the Bible what it means to be a Christian, usually they will say something about faith. But what is faith? Hebrews 11:1 tells us that Christian faith includes both “assurance” and “conviction.” Those are two really strong words and they tell us that there is something special about Christian faith.

So what does it mean to have “assurance” and “conviction?” One way of thinking about this is to ask a closely related question: what is the difference between wishing and biblical hoping? Our answer to this question tells us a lot about what Christian faith looks like. When we wish for something to be true, it means that we want something to be true very much but we don’t know for sure if it really is true. We have to wait and see. But biblical hoping is much stronger than wishing, because our biblical hope is based on “assurance” and “conviction.” We know for certain that our sins are forgiven and our salvation is secure because Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead.

So even though we can’t see God, our hope is a certain and solid hope because of what Jesus has done for us. It is the opposite of wishful thinking! Spend some time in prayer asking the Lord to give you a faith that is full of “assurance” and “conviction” and to remind you of that when you are tempted to forget this.

Learn more about what it means to have faith in this video from Volume 13: God’s Kingdom Comes!