According part 5
According to your faith, so it shall be unto you. Jesus said that when He was healing someone's eyes. Because that's what faith is all about; its not believing in order to get something to happen. That's not faith. That's hope. It's knowing that something HAS happened. When Jesus said, "Have faith in God" He wasn't telling us to try to get God to do something. He was telling us that we CAN trust God because of everything He has done for us. Including the cross, even though at that time it hadn't physically happened yet. Because the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Before there was ever a sinner, there was a Savior. And when Jesus said, "Have faith in God" He was also saying, "Have faith in love." Because God IS love. And, again, this does not mean HOPE for love. Faith, hope, and love are all great things. But they are not necessarily the SAME thing. I think we mix them up quite a bit, but its very important to understand that hope deferred makes the heart sick. If we spend all of our "faith" in the hopes of getting something we haven't got, then we will probably get frustrated and think that our faith "doesn't work." When really, "...What is important is faith expressing itself in love" (Galatians 5:6 NLT). Faith works by love. Faith works through love. Because we have faith IN love. That's why knowing and believing you are loved is so important. That's why God gave us His Holy Spirit--the love receptor. Because God always has and always will love us. The problem is that we, as humanity, swallowed the lie that said we have to do in order to be. The lie that says we have to earn our heavenly Father's love. That's the sin (or unbelief) that Jesus saved us from. That's the sin of the world that Jesus took away. He took away unbelief. By giving us something (someONE, Himself, love) to believe in. He equipped and empowered us to make the right choice. To choose life. To love one another with the love that we are loved with. Because we know and believe that we ARE loved. We have faith in love, because God first loved us. Because He showed us His love by giving His life for us, and giving His life to us. He brought us out of death and into life, by proving His love for us, and proving His love to us. By laying His life down for us, so that He could pick His life (and us) back up. So that we could experience His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life as He lives it in us, and through us, and as us. So that we could have something excellent to believe in. And in believing, let it be unto us. Instead of looking for love in all the wrong places, we can receive it and release it. We can give what we've got instead of trying to get something we think we haven't got. We can enjoy the life we were created to have--one of living and loving. Faith works by love. Our hope--that someday we might be loved--has come to light. We don't have to keep waiting for something. We don't have to keep hoping for something. The Bible even talks about an end of faith. Where we KNOW with a knowledge that passes knowledge (not head knowledge, but heart knowledge) that we are loved. And then we let what's inside come out. Naturally. Simply by knowing and believing that it (HE, LOVE) is in there!