FAITH is the PROOF that you’ve got it.

Faith has lost its meaning to us today. Today the word FAITH means kind of a hazy vague belief of some kind in something or other; the word FAITH doesn’t really mean much. It is as weak as saying “I believe it might rain tomorrow”.

But in God’s Word FAITH means much MORE than that! It means I stand by what I believe… It is the SUBSTANCE, it is the “HUPOSTASIS”!

Nearly 400 years ago, when they were translating the Greek New Testament into English, the translators ran into a puzzling problem: How should they translate the word “hupostasis” in the 11th Chapter of Hebrews.

They knew from the way this word “hupostasis” was used in other Greek literature that it apparently meant something fairly substantial. But just a few years ago archeologists uncovered the burned ruins of an old inn in Northern Israel. There they found a small iron chest…containing apparently the valuable papers of some Roman noblewoman who had been traveling in Israel at that time, for the purpose of checking up on her various land holdings, properties that she owned in Israel. In this little chest they found that most of the papers were labeled with a big title “HUPOSTASIS”. All of these papers which had the title “Hupostasis” across the top were, guess what?–TITLE DEEDS to her properties! The PROOF that she was the owner. But this was long after the Bible was translated, so they didn’t have the advantage of that discovery.

In Hebrews 11, the word “substance” is just as good and conveys the message and I’m quite sure it’s sufficient, but if you want to make it even clearer and more explicit, you can write above that word “substance”, in parentheses, “title deed”. Now faith is what?-THE TITLE DEED!

This Roman woman perhaps had never seen her properties she’d bought in Israel, but she knew she had them and she could prove her ownership even though she had never seen them.

A friend gave me a car once; I got the title through the mail. Though I’d never seen the car, never driven it, didn’t know what it was like, I knew I owned a car. I knew I had it because I HAD THE TITLE in my hand. If you’ve got real FAITH, even though you haven’t SEEN the answer yet, you’ve got the TITLE DEED to it! What you asked for is YOURS; your name’s written on it, and you will see it eventually-that’s FAITH!

So how do you GET such faith? “FAITH COMETH by HEARING the WORD of GOD.” (Romans 10:17) HEARing and HEADing the WORD! It is not hearing ONLY but HEADING the Word–both! It means DOING the Word.

“Heading” is what adds the 3D DIMENSION to “I believe”.