I Find the Key: Faith in My Heart

During this time of my intense spiritual searching, something unusual was taking place in our Sunday School class. The room had swelled to overflowing with people. An air of expectancy was present; people were searching for something—they wanted more!

I noticed that one couple in our class seemed different from the others. When Andy and Nancy prayed, they acted as if they really believed God heard them. They gave reports of answered prayers and physical healings. One Sunday they dropped the bomb: “We pray in tongues,” they said.

We could hear a pin drop. This was unknown to us Baptists who claimed these things weren’t needed any longer: we were in a different dispensation, because we had the Bible. Intrigued by their expectancy in God, I asked Nancy to visit me. I wanted to hear more, but I didn’t want my friends to know, so I kept her visit a secret.

My secret visitor

Nancy came. Feeling very self-conscious, I didn’t know what to say. Finally I blurt out, “I need the Holy Spirit.”

She responded by asking me to tell her about my relationship with God. I told her about how I’d gone down the aisle to receive Jesus and been baptized as a child. I also told her of my fear of God and my lack of assurance that he was in me. I explained how hard I was praying—and yet nothing felt different inside me.

Then Nancy suggested, “Let’s begin at the beginning; let’s talk about your spiritual foundation.” She explained to me the underlying premise of biblical Christian experience. In so doing, I understood the KEY which opened the door to the kingdom of God.

Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

Even though I’d done all the right things—gone to church, prayed the sinner’s prayer, been baptized—I had no faith in my heart. My mind believed Jesus was the Christ, but I’d never learned how to apply faith when I came to Him. At thirty years of age, I finally understood!

True faith resides in the heart, not the intellect

Faith is hard to describe because it is far more than an idea, an emotion, or a mental belief; it means to have confidence and assurance in the heart.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…for by it men of old obtained a testimony (Hebrews 11:1-2).

To believe means to have faith, i.e. to entrust or commit to someone or something. The Bible says it is “with the heart man believes” (Romans 10:10). Faith is the key!

Faith in the heart is the only key that can open the doorway to the kingdom of God. Faith goes beyond doctrine and theology; it must reside in a deeper place within us—in our heart. The heart is a much deeper thing than our mind. We come to know truth with our hearts or spirits, rather than with our minds. Rational Christianity has not known very much about the heart. We’ve been trapped in our heads and tried to make our relationship with God work through it.

One basic distinction between Christianity and other religions is that Christianity goes beyond a simple code of ethics, a list of rules and laws that one must follow, and offers direct, spiritual experiences with a loving God.

Nothing to pull my cart with

Catholic lay evangelist Ralph Nault says, “When it comes to Christianity, we often put the cart before the horse. We teach people how to have a nice cart, how to be a good Christian, but give them nothing to pull it with.” (http://www.thenewlife.us)

This was me. For most of my life, I followed all the rules and tried very hard to behave like a Christian person, yet I had no genuine faith in my heart—nothing to pull my nice cart with.

Question:  What do you use to pull your cart with?