In Hebrew the word is אֵֶמוּנָה and in Greek it is πιστις. We are talking about faith and if you can’t read either of those two words, it doesn’t mean you don’t have faith. You don’t have to be a Hebrew or Greek scholar to have faith. You don’t have to understand all the mysteries or lock God down into a box, tethered by your own presuppositions and assumptions.
No.
God is much bigger than that. God is so big, in fact, that we is trustable. He is faithable. He is the One we can lean on even when we fail to understand what is going on.
There is a world of difference between belief and faith. I can believe eating better will result in weightloss. It is quite another thing to live as if that knowledge is true. Faith is the second. Faith is leaning into the invisible and trusting you won’t fall over. Faith is peering over into the black abyss as if the bottom is merely inches away.
Faith.
It doesn’t consist of the things we do but it is demonstrated that way. Faith is the person who is willing to walk out on the glass bridge because they trust it will hold. Belief is the lady standing off to the side, not willing to venture out because she knows in principle it will hold but not in a practical enough sense to venture out.
Faith allows us to venture. It allows us to explore. It allows us to go places and do things we might not otherwise because we know there is more going on than what we can see. Faith knows that our enemies and our adversaries are outnumbered by our protectors and avengers. If only we had eyes to see the spiritual reality! We don’t but we live as if we do and that is called faith.