What is Faith?
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · July 12, 2026 · Heroes of the Faith series
Jeremy MacDonald opens the Heroes of the Faith series in Hebrews 10 and 11:1, sharing how Beth Steeves trusted God's goodness as she was dying. He explains that faith is confidence in God's promises, grounded in evidence, and calls us to seek Him.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The Heroes of the Faith series
Topics: Hope, Faith, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:01] It was January 25th of this year. It was a Sunday, and after church, I went to go visit Beth Steeves. Beth is a part of this church for many years, her and her husband, Harry. She's 80 years old at the time, and as we would later discover, she was in her final week of life. We knew at the time, or I knew at the time going to visit her, that she was dying, and she knew that. But that visit indeed was exactly one week before she passed. Beth and Harry Steeves, two phenomenal people I got to know through growing up here at this church. This is a bit of an aside, but one of my other memories of Harry and Beth was as a young youth pastor over a decade ago, a single youth pastor. They said, "Hey, if you ever had a reason to borrow our convertible in the summertime, you know we would lend it to you." And so very much so the summer of 2012, I met a very cute girl from Miramichi, and I had a reason to borrow Harry and Beth's convertible, and I took my now wife for a drive, and that was wonderful.
[1:03] So I knew Harry and Beth quite well. Harry died a few years prior, and in January, I went to visit Beth knowing that she didn't have much time left here on this earth. And so I'm in her house. She and her body, her body is failing, clearly, but she is just as sharp as anything. And so I get to have this conversation with a woman who's facing the most unbelievably difficult and challenging thing that we'll all face at one point, and that is she knew she was dying. And I said, "Beth, tell me how you're feeling in this moment. Not obviously from a body perspective, but how is your soul doing?" And she looked me in the eye, and I'll never forget this now for the rest of my life. She said, "Jeremy, the Lord is so good."
[1:49] And in that moment, as I'm staring at this lady whose body is frail, but looking into her eyes, realizing that her spirit is so strong, and she is so unbelievably and unwaveringly committed to the goodness of the Lord. In part, I kind of feel like in that moment, I want to be like, "No, Beth, don't you know? You're dying. This is the time where things, you should have some something. Don't you have doubts or concerns or..." And as I'm chatting with her, it's just this wild amount of faith that is exuding from her person, from her character, from her eyes as I'm talking with her.
[2:35] And maybe this has been your experience, too. Maybe you've bumped into somebody, and the circumstances of their life would be such that you would say, "Oh, I wouldn't want this for anybody. These circumstances are difficult or awful. The suffering that you might be experiencing is so challenging." And yet, that person and the way that they were responding to their circumstances, or the way that they would, even just the way that they would talk about life and what they were going through or their week or their day, there was something inside of them and you're like, "I need more of that. What is that?" And there, I've been a Christian my whole life, but in those moments in talking with Beth, I'm like, man, that moment, that faith that she has is something that I aspire to.
[3:22] And for the next few weeks, and as a part of this summer series, we're wanting to wrestle with this question: What is faith? What is faith, and what does it actually look like? Because you can kind of sometimes piece it out and you can point out people like Beth and say, "She's got it. She's got it for sure." And he's got it, and you have a family member or somebody and you can think, like, "Oh, they clearly have it." But what is that, and where does it come from, and how do you... Can I have some of it? Can I step into that? What does it mean to have that level of understanding or belief or faith? What is that? And the interesting thing is when you meet people like that, it's like, oh, it's in that person, and so you try to back engineer. What is that?
[4:07] If you're not a Jesus follower, if you're not a Christian, we're happy that you're here. You're always welcome to listen. You're always welcome to explore faith. And so sometimes if you're here, you've disengaged after a while, or you're new back in, or you've got questions or doubts, a lot of times when we talk about faith, and this is probably the fault of people just like me, other preachers that have maybe misunderstood this or misconstrued this to you, is that faith sometimes comes across as something that it really isn't, actually. And for many people in our world today, they assume that Christianity, that what we gather here to talk about and to live out and to express, that Christianity requires mind-numbing, experience-denying faith. And I don't want to discount your experience if that's been what you've been told or what people have kind of put on you, the idea that you have to turn your mind off and you have to be silly about things, and you can't acknowledge the difficulties of the world. But what you should know is that Christianity, in fact, the original version of our faith right from the very, very start, the original version did not require any of these things.
[5:15] The original version is actually robust. The original version, faith is clearly, clearly articulated and defined, and we want to do that for you and for us because of what it might do for our faith and our understanding of what our faith actually is and represents. And so as we kind of walk into it, the thing is, is faith is this big word. It's a big concept. It's a big word. You got to keep the faith. You got to have the faith. There's songs that talk about faith that I'm not going to sing. And when you talk and think about faith, you've got these ideas of what it is, and we should make sure we're really clear what faith is not, especially up front here. Faith is not like a force or a power. You've heard this from people, and sometimes, and especially in difficult circumstances, you're like, "Well, just have faith." And you're like, "Okay, but where does that come from?" They're like, "Inside of you." And you're like, "Ugh!"
[6:01] How do I get it out of me? Or so it works its way out, and don't think too much about that. But it's not a force, it's not something you just tap into or have a lot of just by happenstance. It's not this invisible thing. It's not a force or a power. Although some people try to make it out to be that, that you could wield it, like the Force, for those that are "Star Wars" fans. I am as well, but let's not talk about it. So then it's also not a formula. Some people think it's like, well, if I can just say these particular words in the right order. Maybe you have or had experiences where people could just... Man, the way they prayed, as an example. And if you come to faith at some point and somebody says, "All right, who's going to pray?" And they look at you, and you're like, "Don't look at me, because I don't know." And you're nervous because you don't want to say the wrong thing, and somebody somehow communicated in some way to you that it was about particular kinds of words in a particular order, and if you could get it right, then it would unlock something. It's like, no, that's not it. That's not faith.
[7:00] In fact, Jesus talked at length about this when He talks about how to pray, and He's like: Don't pray like the pagans. The pagans think because of their words and because of the way they order them, their many words, that then God will finally hear you. And that was this last series. We talked for the last five weeks, the life of Elijah, for the prophets of Baal. That's what they assumed, is, "I could just get through the formula, and it would unlock something from God." That's not faith, and that's not our faith. That's never been and never will be. What faith is is clearly articulated and defined. The writer of Hebrews has written it down for you and for me. And this summer, we're going to plumb the depths of what faith actually means and looks like, so that you can decide if that's what you want to have and chase after. And that someday somebody might look into your eyes and say, "What is that that you have?"
[7:53] And you can explain to them it's faith. And what is that? The author says in Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is..." And then they define it. But before we get there, when you read the Scriptures, oftentimes you have to be careful about just reading one verse, because one verse sometimes can be easy to kind of rip out of the context of where it's coming from. And in this instance, kind of the cue when we're reading this in chapter 11 verse 1 is the word "now." "Now faith is..." Well, what's now? Why now? What's going on right now? Well, to the writer of Hebrews, of which we don't know exactly who that person is, but the writer has just come from articulating a story of real-life examples that brings to the point of defining faith. And so we're just going to take a step back before the definition and see where we're coming from to understand where we're going to.
[8:49] So if you go back just a few verses, Hebrews 10, you catch a glimpse of this. Now, Hebrews is being written after the resurrection of Jesus, so we're talking about faith specifically from the angle of those that have put their faith in Jesus. And so the New Testament is clear after the resurrection. The Church was birthed and expanded all around the Mediterranean rim. People put their trust into Jesus, His resurrection, and who He was and who He claimed to be. And all of a sudden, that had ramifications and implications. And the writer of Hebrews is speaking to a group of Christians who've experienced the ramifications and the implications of following Jesus in their day, and this is what it looked like. "Remember those earlier days after you had received the light," that is Jesus, "when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering."
[9:44] Which is so fascinating, because right from the very start, the Christians, the Jesus followers, experienced suffering. And if your expression or experience of faith doesn't know what to do with suffering, you need to come back to the New Testament and recognize that our faith deals wonderfully and deeply with the suffering of this world, because it comes in great measure for people. And our faith is not terrified of that. It has a way to engage that. It has a way to walk through that. And the writer of Hebrews says, "When you endured in great conflict of suffering." He explains, "Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution, and at other times, you stood side by side with those who were so treated." And some of you, you know this.
[10:29] It's like you can experience suffering and difficulty, and that's terrible and awful, but it's almost worse when you... And sometimes it actually is worse, when you're standing beside someone you love deeply, and they're walking through that suffering. It pulls at your soul, and this was the experience. They were experiencing great suffering, great persecution. "You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions." Which is fascinating. Even from the earliest of days, this understanding that our life was marked by something much deeper, rooted in something much more real than just what we are experiencing. So they would lose their possessions, and it's like, "Yeah, whatever.
[11:14] The Lord's possessions is what I'm after." And you're like, "Whoa, that's interesting." That was right from the very start, the expression of faith was so robust, even in the sight of challenge and difficulty. "So do not throw away..." And I highlighted it because I want you to remember it. It's secret. If it's not highlighted in your Bible, you should highlight it now, though. That's cool if you brought one. "Do not throw away your confidence." Remember that word, your confidence. "Don't throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded." The author goes on and says, "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised." Remember that, what God has promised.
[12:00] Quotes a few other things, and then coming in right before the definition of faith says, "But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved." Now, faith is confidence. This is the start to the definition. Faith is confidence. And confidence is really fascinating. It's a wonderful thing to have. It's something that we've been praying for in our family for about six and a half years or so. So we named our kids, their middle name's a biblical character that we pull two kind of pieces from the biblical life and then pray over them. And so our daughter, Ember, who's here over in kids ministry, she's six, and so her middle name is Ruth.
[12:51] And so we pray over our daughter that she would have the confidence and the compassion of Ruth, and we've been praying for her since she was born. And we knew our prayers were being answered pretty early on, actually. I think she was about three years old. We were driving, and she says, "Daddy, we really should go visit Nana because I bet she misses me. I haven't seen her in a while, and I bet she's missing me a lot." And we're like, "Oh, you've got some confidence." And we've been praying for that, so that's good, but maybe we just adjust our prayers a bit or add some more prayers in other places. That's great. And so she's got confidence. But confidence is this wonderful thing. It clarifies something. It gives you kind of like this robust understanding. And the writer says, "Faith is confidence," but then goes on. It's not just confidence, full stop. It's confidence in something. Because you have to root your confidence in an object, of something or someone. And so you can be a confident person. That means you're confident in yourself in some way, shape, or form. You can have confidence in your work. You can have confidence in an item.
[13:54] You're sitting in a chair, confident it's not going to collapse. Your confidence, though, has to be placed in something. And so the author of Hebrews says your faith is confidence in something particular, and in particular, what the author says is it's in what we hope for. Okay, this is a new word, what we hope for. Confidence in what we hope for. Well, what is it that we hope for, and what does hope really and truly mean? Well, in this instance, and what was helpful is I pulled a definition from another preacher, this guy Andy Stanley out of Atlanta. And so he defines hope as wanting something to be with no guarantee. Rhymes, which is kind of nice. It's easy to catch on. So hope, wanting something to be without a guarantee. You can hope that your team wins the World Cup, as an example. Current events, not bad.
[14:51] Thank you. You can hope that you get a, let's say, your family gets to do something cool later this summer. You can hope that your family, your kids, grow up and that they want to come back and visit you. Oh, that'd be nice. You can hope all sorts of things, but there's no guarantee to it. That's what makes it hope. You're hopeful. You hope that, but the hope that you have is not a guarantee. Let's use an example and then kind of get the jump over from when hope changes. So if you're at work and you hope for a raise, you might come back every day and say, "Man, I hope I get a raise at work at some point." But then something happens. So you're hopeful for a raise, but that can actually change. And the question is, what makes us confident that hope so will be so?
[15:39] What gives us confidence in what we had hoped for? And the answer is really, really clear and kind of simple, actually. The confidence comes from a promise. And so if you're at work and you hope for a raise and at some point, your boss comes to you and says, "Great news. At the end of this quarter, in six weeks from now, we're going to give you a raise," all of a sudden, you now have a promise of what you had hoped for. Go with me for a second. You go home that night and you don't say, "Wow, I hope I get a raise," because you've been promised the raise. That hope has changed. You now have confidence, and you haven't received the promise yet, so it's still yet to come, but because of the promise from your boss, you now have faith that you're going to get a raise.
[16:34] Your faith is this confidence in what you had hoped for. Now, the writer of Hebrews says your faith is confidence in what we hope for. In particular, when we think about our faith in God, we can actually really clearly define it, that our confidence is in this God that we talk about, that it's confidence that God is who He says He is, and that He will do what He has promised to do. What He's promised to do in your life, what He's promised to do in our world, what He promises to do for all people in all times. Our faith is a confidence in God.
[17:20] It's a confidence rooted in the things that He has already said and that He's already promised, who He is. That is what our faith actually is. Now, we have to be careful here because sometimes people think that that confidence or that faith becomes almost circular. This is really important. We don't have confidence because of faith. We don't have confidence in God because, again, it's not something that just we need to well up inside of us. Why are we confident about God? "Well, it's just, again, it's inside. We just have to believe more." It's like, no. We have confidence in God because of evidence, and the minute you realize this, in some ways, it just releases this pressure. Because maybe for you, somewhere down the line, somebody helped deconstruct a portion of your faith, and maybe it was a university course or something, and all of a sudden, they tried to convince you that faith and Christianity was not connected to any kind of evidence or any kind of real life or reality.
[18:14] It's like, "No, actually, faith in God is one of the most rational, evidence-based decisions you can possibly make." We believe in the God of the Scriptures because He has continually, brought His promises to fulfillment. We believe in the God of the Bible because Jesus predicted His death, burial, and resurrection, and then, as a historical fact, actually pulled it off. The evidence of God is what confirms our confidence in God. Or put this way, one of the commentators, Amy Peeler, writing about this passage in Hebrews, she says, "Christian faith is neither ignorant nor naive." And if somebody sold you a faith like that, or maybe put this way, if you've walked away from faith because you felt like it was ignorant or naive, friends, great news. You didn't walk away from the Christian faith.
[19:11] You walked away from some fake version of it. The real version is neither ignorant nor naive. The real version of faith is actually a beautiful, wonderful thing. Faith is to see what God has already tangibly revealed to be true and trust that God will continue to act in line with the revelation of that truth. Or in particular, for the people of who the writer of Hebrews is writing to, this community, and I think not just that community, but this community, can have faith in God because they have seen what God has already done. This is the nature of our faith. We anchor in the truth of where He's already been faithful. We have all these wonderful examples in the Scriptures, of which we're going to walk through for the next eight weeks, but there's even the subjective story of God at work in our world today that we can capture, that we can look into Bethesda's eyes and realize, "Oh, God has fulfilled promises in your life in real and tangible ways, and He will continue to be faithful into the future."
[20:22] What a gift that is. And what a gift it is that when God has proven faithful in your life that you might share about that with the people around you as a means of offering like flowers to them. Like, "Look at this. God is so good, and here is how He has fulfilled wonderful promises in my life. You need to hear this because it will change your faith. It will make it more confident in who He is and who He continues to be." So the writer of Hebrews 11:1, "Faith is confidence in what we hope for, and it's assurance about what we do not see," because sometimes the promises, they haven't been delivered yet, right? That's okay. The raise is yet to come. It doesn't change the fact that we have faith that it's coming.
[21:07] The promise is what we can anchor our hopes in. It's what gives us the confidence. It's a promise. And so we don't fully see it yet, but that's the point. This kind of faith and this confidence, this trust in God, the writer says, "This is what the ancients were commended for." So it's not just people today when you see them, and you're like, "That faith is worth commending them for. Like, that's so fascinating." But it's actually throughout the centuries, throughout the history. And the writer of Hebrews will actually walk through and explain, "Hey, this example of faith from history, this example of faith." He'll tell you about Abraham, tell you about Moses, Abel, Enoch. And over the course of the summer, we'll get to walk through those stories and see how their confidence in God, how their confidence in God is commendable in how they lived it out.
[21:57] And the fascinating thing about each of the examples is that the author of Hebrews says, teeing up each of them, starts with the line, this, "By faith." By faith Abel did da-da-da-da-da. By faith Enoch did such and such and such. By faith Abraham. By faith Rahab. And "by faith" simply means that the confidence that they had in God resulted in some type of action. The confidence that they had in God didn't just rest as confidence in who God says He is and in His promises, but when you're that confident in God, it changes you, and it changes the way that you act in the world. And so when you read Hebrews 11, of which I hope you do throughout the summer, the question you should ask yourself is, what do we do with this faith?
[22:52] What do we do with this confidence in God? What does this result in for me? Like, if I was so confident and sure that the God of the universe was with me and His promises were true, would that change how I live my life today? Probably. Hopefully. Like, if I could build my faith up to be 10 times what it is right now, how would that adjust how I just walk through everyday interactions with people? Like, if the Spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead, and I believe that it's that same Spirit that resides in the hearts and lives of every single Christian, what would that kind of power do to the way that you operate tomorrow morning? Like, hopefully crazy ways. And I don't really know the answer to exactly what that looks like for you, and that's why we created this little devotional. It's a nice segue.
[23:45] Because for the next eight weeks, although we'll talk about the examples here from the platform, you have to take these examples and these texts and let them work their way through your own life and your own experiences and see how confidence in God might shape your own understanding of your world, your life, your family, your work, your interactions, your future, your planning, all of these things. You see faith in action through the commendable examples of the ancients, and then you think, "Lord, what would it mean to be that confident in You today in Moncton, New Brunswick, in the summer of 2026?" And the answer is interesting because I don't know what it is for you. But perhaps in community, in prayer, the people around you, you might discover what that would look like.
[24:35] Here's at least the direction that it's going to go, and this is important because by faith, action actually takes place. By having confidence in God and belief in Him, something actually has to happen, and the writer actually catches this. So, he gives the example of Abel, gives the example of Enoch, and then is like, "Whoa, okay, wait. Before we get into the rest of them, let me just remind you, and remind you, that without faith, it's actually impossible to please God." And hopefully, we're all about trying to please the God of the universe. And he gives the reason. He says, "Because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists." That's wonderful. That's a great first step. We love that step. Belief in God is awesome. You hear me say all the time, "Belief in God is a good thing to do." But the demons believe that God exists, and we don't want to be just like the demons.
[25:23] We want to go a little bit further. That's a good thing. And so what's a little further? "And that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him." The seeking of the Lord, when I was growing up, we would use the term, "Oh, there's people that are seekers." And we would think that those were the folks that were far from God, but maybe they had questions and they'd show up at church, and we'd call them seekers. And then we figured at some point, you stop becoming a seeker because you became saved, and that was your story. But the Scriptures actually say something much different. The Scriptures say that for our entire lives, this is the bottom line, this is the critical piece, that God rewards seekers, not settlers.
[26:13] And in the summertime, it can be easy to settle into your faith, I think. And maybe you've been in a season where it's been a long time of just settling. "I've got it kind of sorted. I've got enough that I can get by. I'm okay with where we're at. I feel comfortable here. I'm going to settle down." And it's not that you don't believe or, of course, maybe even you're reading the Scriptures, and all those things are wonderful, but something in your spirit just kind of settled. And I think God says when you have confidence in Him, you seek after Him, and by faith, you are a part of His story in profound kind of ways. And so our challenge, I think, is that over the next eight weeks, that you and I and all of us, that we would seriously seek after the Lord, seriously take our faith and put it out in front of us and say, "What does it mean to have more confidence in God, and what might He call me to?"
[27:19] To recognize the stories of those that, even in the midst of the hardest of circumstances, can look you in the eye and can say, "The Lord is so good." That kind of confidence will change the world. That kind of confidence will change your world, change the world of the people around you. And so this summer, if we are to seek, I do wonder what we'll find, and I hope that it will be a beautiful picture of what God has for you and has for me. I'm going to pray for us, and I'm going to pray for you, and I want to pray for a few people here who, when I describe seeking as somebody who's not really taken a lot of steps toward Jesus or faith before, but is just somebody that has early on in their journey, you're like, "Yeah, that's kind of like me."
[28:07] The beautiful thing is that this is, again, what we should all be doing, and today, if you've not actually sought after the Lord or taken steps towards Him or sought after God, that you could actually do that here this morning. We try to make space, and at the end of our service, our prayer team will be here. We'd love to pray along with you if you'd like to learn what it means to take those kinds of steps. But would you join us all in praying this prayer that our hearts would be turned to God, and we would grow in confidence in Him, and let today be even the first day that you take steps in seeking after Him. Would you all join me as I pray? Heavenly Father, thank You for preserving these texts. Thanks that as they were written down, that they of course tell the story of a group of people that faith in You cost so much.
[28:53] And Lord, we don't pretend to know all that that really and truly meant, and yet we recognize that example as well is something worth noting because we are the kinds of people that are enamored by the confidence, even in the toughest of circumstances. And in this room, we know we prayed earlier, there are circumstances that are so challenging and so difficult, and Lord, we're grateful that just because we suffer and just because we face challenges doesn't mean that You're not real, but just the opposite. Lord, we're grateful that we have something even greater in the midst of those things, and that's You. And so Lord, I pray that I would be someone who seeks after You, and specifically that I would seek after You this summer, and for all of us, would this be our prayer? That we seek after You this summer, that our confidence would grow in You, and that You would call us, that faith that would actually cause us to do things that maybe we'd be so nervous even if You'd reveal it to us in this moment, it'd be terrifying. But with that faith, that we would be willing to take that step towards You, to take that step in that relationship, or take that step in that conversation, or take that step with our work, or take that step in whatever it is that is before us, and You're calling us to trust You and Your promises.
[30:11] And so thank You that You've been faithful and that we can continue to have that trust. Lord, for those that are here, and this is even new information, that they could put a confident kind of trust in You, and it's not just blind faith, but it's rooted in the evidence of Your story, Lord. In these moments, would You work in their hearts? Would they even be reaching out to You in their hearts right now, recognizing that they need to seek after You today and tomorrow and this week and this month. And Lord, would we be the kinds of people that this is not a settling kind of summer, but this is a seeking summer, and we'll always be able to tell the story of how we sought after You in 2026. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.