Article February 12, 2007 Issue

A PARTNERSHIP WITH GOD

BY ELAINE FOLLIS

I'VE NEVER KNOWN anyone who does not, in one way or another, value faith. I'm not talking about a creed here—I mean that special quality of strength, courage, and persistence. Faith is key in the achievement of security and happiness.

Artists, athletes, and business leaders often describe faith as an important factor in their success. Faith can seem pretty elusive, however, especially if it focuses on faith in oneself. People who advance rapidly appear to have an abundance of it, while others, whose lives repeatedly stall out, do not. Inequalities like these are characteristic of the human condition generally; there are "haves" and "have-nots" in just about every area of life. But the Bible takes a completely different approach to the subject. It places faith within a spiritual context, as centered on God, as an active response to His love that empowers, equally, everyone willing to recognize and accept it.

The Bible provides so many examples depicting the nature of faith and its impact on individual and collective experience. The patriarch Abraham is one of the very strongest models of the transformative power of faith in God. In obedience to God's direction, Abraham left the comforts of a high civilization to strike out for new territory. He arrived in a land that eventually became home for him and his descendants, and he became the "founding father" of an entire culture.