Hebrews 4:2

"For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it."
Hebrews 4:2


Quite often in this life we go through the same experiences as someone else, but come out with a different conclusion. And it is frustrating to us, because our conclusion (whichever it is) totally makes more sense, and we can lay it out for the other person, thinking that if they just understand our reasoning, that of course they will naturally agree. And often then, they don't. And maybe they feel the same way, and try to explain it to us from their perspective... and we say, yes, I see your reasoning, I took those things into account, but I still disagree with you. Both people could be extremely logical, but in the end it comes down to value judgements, and to one person something is more important than to the other person.

I kind of like the fact that this verse tells us that, at least in the case of the gospel, the difference is Faith. In the Guide to the Scriptures and the Bible Dictionary, we learn that faith is confidence and trust, a principle of action and power, and hope in things that we do not see, but which are true. And maybe that hope/confidence that we have in God makes the difference a lot of times, helping us to still work towards the ideal, even when the ideal seems impossibly far away. And it is our faith in other people and whatever we're currently working on that gives us the motivation to continue, and to succeed where other people might give up, or expect less. The same applies to ourselves. We need to have faith in ourselves that we can succeed in this life... and faith in God that he will help us to do so. If we lose faith in either one, then it's easy to get into a place where all we can see is failure, and all we want to do is escape.

Today, instead of taking our day as-is, lets mix in a little faith. It makes everything taste better. :)