Many of us live by faith, but we do not live by faith intentionally. If you do not have faith, you go crazy. The problem is not that you do not live by faith, it is not living intentionally by faith. Faith is a vital factor for your life, but until you apply it intentionally, until you say do not do this, I will achieve that, it does not manifest itself in a powerful way as it should be manifested.
In Hebrews 11, we see what we have called the heroes of faith; If these people are able to be on the list of faith, you can also. Samson went to bed with prostitutes, but God says you have to imitate the faith that this man had. We are told about Rahab, the harlot; Of Abraham, a man who gave his wife out of fear, to get rid of certain problems.
The fact that we see the life of problems, immorality, of all these people, is not permission for you to do things wrong; Christians do not seek a license to sin, but a way out of sin. If you do things wrong, there are consequences; But, even if you do not meet the standard of the world, before God, the only thing He looks at is your faith. Maybe another does not believe that you have the moral or the right thoughts; But, if you dare to believe, you like God more than the religiosity of the other, than your way of dressing, talking and the other's expectations of you; It is your faith that moves God. So there is no excuse for doing things wrong; It took Abraham twenty-five years; But, in spite of that, God did not remove him from the list; God told him what he did well, when he believed.
The only currency of exchange in the kingdom of God is faith. As in any country, if you do not have the currency they accept, you can have all the money in the world, but there is no exchange. The only option is that you have a credit card, through which a transaction is automatically made in which you pay with the currency you bring, and it is changed to the currency they accept; Then you have purchasing power. And that is what faith does. With your faith, you exchange your illness, for healing. Your faith leads you to exchange your need, for God's provision. The only exchange that is in the kingdom of God is by faith; It's not because of your morals or your religiosity. Religious, it bothers them that, sometimes, do not meet the standards that the world wants, but if you have faith, you can achieve more than what the world achieves. People wonder how you have achieved so much; Very simple: You have dared to believe what they do not believe. They wonder with what money you do it. They think you're rich; What you have is a card, which gives you everything you need. What is that card? Faith. The only thing you need is faith. That is the only currency of exchange in the kingdom of God.
Faith without works is dead. Therefore, you can not say that you have faith, if your actions do not show it, if they do not go hand in hand with what you are believing. If you say that your country is going to prosper, do not buy a house outside of your country; Invest in your country. Your faith and your works say what you are believing. If you are believing something, your actions have to support it.
"It is, therefore, faith the certainty of what is expected, the conviction of what is not seen ... 3 By faith we understand that the universe was constituted by the word of God, so that what is seen was made of what was not seen. "Hebrews 11: 1 and 3
That word certainty translates better as substance, and a better word for conviction is evidence; Faith is substance, it is evidence. And, if we look at verse 3, it tells us that by faith we understand. So, when you have knowledge by faith, your actions have to correspond to the knowledge you have.
Many say they want to know the truth, but the truth is that there are those who never want to know the truth, because the day they know it, they are forced to change for the truth they knew. There are reports, for example, in which the truth is not necessarily sought, because you do not live by the truth in those circles, but by the controversy. And the day they saw the truth, they would have to say: I was wrong. People who speak ill of you, are not willing to meet you, because when they know you and realize that what they say about you is not true, they have to give back what they have said about you; They have to treat you well, respectfully, ask for your forgiveness; And not everyone wants to ask for forgiveness, so they prefer not to know the truth; Because the truth forces them to change. And, one of the things that faith does is make you understand things that you did not understand before. Faith gives you substance, conviction or evidence, and when you have evidence of something, you can not go to the opposite side; You act based on the evidence you have. Faith makes you understand, and when you understand, now your reactions are based on your faith. You can not live in this life emotionally, you have to learn to act and react by faith and by what you understand by faith, by the substance that faith gives you.
Many do not see it that way, but one of the things that faith does is that it gives you the strength to overcome temptations, sin. When you have faith, do not yield to temptations easily, you know that your future is greater than what you are living, so do not give yourself over to the momentary passions to experience something; Because your faith tells you: What I am living is not my end. Faith makes you survive temptations. Why are you weak in the flesh? Very simple: Because you have not yet seen the future that God has for you; Because, if you realized and believed in the future that God has for you and you understood, you would not act like today, making decisions that take you away more and more from the future you want.