"Making It Count..." -2

"For our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name." (Psalms 33:21) Now just in case you were thinking about a "leap of faith" and confused that with my illustration of falling backwards, you are highly mistaken; a leap of faith is something hoped for, as in, I will leap out because I believe God will catch me, or I will leap because I believe God will protect me. My illustration of falling backwards was all about trust, meaning that I know God has me, therefore I am safe! Two very different things! Okay, maybe you can't see that quite clearly enough yet; so let's discover the difference for a moment. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"; which clearly says that our faith is predicated on that which we have not realized yet, but hope will be. Now, look at 1 John 1:1-4, by which we can see what trust looks like, as he says, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life; for the Life was manifested, and we have seen IT, and bear witness, and show unto you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us; that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." Besides all that, the verse we are looking at today clearly says, "because we have trusted", which is predicated upon the past events, meaning we know that God does what He says He will do, because we have witnessed it ourselves. And furthermore, as I said yesterday, we can read His word and see how much He loves us, putting our faith in that which He says; but God demonstrated His love for us by sending His Son; and Jesus surely came, died on that cross, and rose again on the third day! If you look again at John 6:68, Peter used both faith and trust in the same sentence, by saying, "And we believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God". He trusted that Jesus was who He said He was, at least until it looked like He wasn't, and it looked as though His kingdom was being taken from Him; at which point, Peter was dependent upon just his faith, and his faith was obscured by the events that were taking place before his eyes. As a matter of fact; if you look at the three times Jesus asked Peter, "Peter do you love me", the third time Jesus asked Peter that He used the word 'phileo', which means more of the love of a friend; the first two times were the word 'agapao', which is more likened unto "Beloved", and is unconditional; but the third one incorporates something else, something that comes with friendship, which is trust...so go ahead and fall... "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." (James 1:2-4)