EVERY individual yearns to expe- rience life at its highest and best. All of us want sufficient faith to enable us to demonstrate complete happiness, good health, and adequate supply for our daily needs.
Webster defines faith as belief and trust in God. Many of us, if we were to analyze our faith, would see that we have placed our confidence in various things other than God-money, power, fame, beauty, luck, and so on. These substitutes for God may serve us for a while, but eventually we learn that they are transitory factors, mere shadows without substance, and do not afford us the satisfaction and security we desire.
We should not have faith in anything less than God, for when we center our faith in His good, we are building foun- dations for eternity. Charles Fillmore's definition of faith as "the perceiving power of the mind linked with the power to shape substance" identifies us with God and enables us to understand and apply the law of mind action that enables us to form substance and estab- lish our good.
"The character and attributes of the things in your mind become substantial to you because of your faith," asserts Mr. Fillmore. "The office of faith is to take abstract ideas and give them definite form and substance." This is what Paul meant when he defined faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The New English Bible translates Paul's words this way: "Faith gives substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see."
J. B. Phillips further clarifies Paul's explanation of faith this way: "Now faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for; it means being certain of things we cannot see.... And it is after all only by faith that our minds accept as fact that the whole scheme of time and space was created by God's command that the world which we can. see has come into being through prin- ciples which are invisible."
We should never hesitate to use the power of God that works out things in the invisible. When we get a strong perception of something that the Christ Mind in us tells us is true and good, we should act upon that inspiration, then our demonstrations will come easily and naturally as a result of our faith and action.
We bless you in prayer with the words of Jesus Christ: "According to your faith be it done to you." As your mind conceives ideas of health, happiness, and supply, undergird your faith with love and wisdom and trust in God. Thus you shape divine substance into forms of good that fulfill all your needs.
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