Faith

The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. Belief may not be able to resist doubt and withstand fear, but faith is always triumphant over doubting, for faith is both positive and living. 102:6

faith should accept the fact of the presence of the indwelling Adjuster 108:6.8

Adjuster translates sense of duty into that higher and more certain faith in the eternal realities of revelation 102:1.1

faith and love grounded upon an early training makes faith dependable 177:2.2

Few persons live up to the faith which they really have. 48:7.4

In the Urantia Book

The faith from beyond will not fail us (131:3.2)

Havoners are strangers to saving by faith (3:5.17)

The just shall live by faith (131:2.8)

• While there is a very definite limit to the province of the petitions of prayer, such limits do not equally apply to the faith of those who pray. 91:6.1

Morontia and spirit reason will augment faith (103:7.2)

• Faith most willingly carries reason along as far as reason can go and then goes on with wisdom to the full philosophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon the limitless and never-ending universe journey in the sole company of TRUTH. 103:9.7
• our faith limits Father’s bestowal of spiritual gifts 166:4.11
• planetary isolation affords opportunity to exercise faith 50:7.1
• Father has predicated finite progress upon effort, creature achievement upon perseverance, and personality development upon faith 115:7.2

Having faith

• we must fight the good fight of faith 166:3.4
• we should exercise the faith at our command instead of yield to evil temptations 26:5.3 158:6.2
• simple childlike faith is only requisite to enter kingdom 40:7.2 93:6.4 102:1.1 137:8.17 138:8.8 139:12.7 140:1.4 140:10.1 141:7.6 150:5.2 157:2.2 163:2.4 170:2.21 170:3.2-3 170:5.13 192:2.9 196:0.11-12
• We will long use faith and be dependent on revelation if we hope to progress quickly and safely. 19:5.12
• we must take kingdom in spiritual power and by the persistent assaults of living faith 166:3.5

What have faith in

• we must have faith in certainty and security of Father’s guidance and protection 196:0.9
• faith in effectiveness of human desire to be like God 140:10.9
• have faith in the fundamental goodness of universe 196:0.11
• we must have faith in God alone, that is truth, beauty and goodness personified and infinitely more 101:8.1 102:6.5
• we should have faith in God and on our fellow man 140:5.12 191:2.1
• we should have faith in Jesus’ words 193:0.3
• our personal faith in the exceedingly great and precious promises of God is what ensures our becoming partakers of the divine nature. 143:2.4
• we should have faith in the eventual triumph of divine justice and eternal goodness. 140:8.8
• saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the spiritual, from the human to the divine, from time to eternity. 102:0.3

Defined as

• faith is the act by which man earned God’s favor 92:4.7 92:5.10 93:4.3-8 93:6.4 94:0.1 94:1.5-6
• faith always is triumphant over doubting 101:0.3 102:6.7 103:8.4-5 182:3.11
• faith is the antidote to insecurity 143:7.3
• To see God—by faith—means to acquire true spiritual insight, what enhances Adjuster guidance, and both augment God-consciousness. And when we know the Father, we are confirmed in the assurance of divine sonship, and we can increasingly love each of our brothers in the flesh, not only as a brother—with brotherly love—but also as a father—with fatherly affection. 140:5.4-14
• Faith is a living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. (101:2.2,8) 101:8.1
• faith is a condition for an effective prayer 91:9.8
• Faith is the connection between moral consciousness and the spiritual concept of enduring reality. 50:7.1 191:5.5
• connection of moral consciousness and spiritual reality 101:1.6 101:3.4 101:9.9
• faith is a dependence on God which yields assurance 196:0.12
• faith is an effective armor against sin, iniquity, and evil spirits 53:8.8
• Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father’s gift to man. 101:3.2
• Religion is evolutionary man’s supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and “endure as seeing Him who is invisible. 102:2.8
• faith is the energy of a better life 131:3.4
• faith is one of the fruits of the Spirit 34:6.13
• faith is a gift of God 143:2.7
• faith certainty is the greatest technique for dealing with all superficial contentions 102:7.6
• Let the term “faith” stand for the individual’s relation to God rather than for the creedal formulation of what some group of mortals have been able to agree upon as a common religious attitude. 99:5.7
• Faith is to religion what sails are to a ship; it is an addition of power, not an added burden of life. 159:3.8
• living religious faith is more than the association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy; it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. 101:8.2
• faith is always logical from the basis of an inner viewpoint, even though such faith may appear to be quite unfounded from the inlooking viewpoint of the scientific approach 103:7.6
• Reason, wisdom, and faith are man’s highest human attainments. 103:9.6
• Man’s sole contribution to growth is the mobilization of the total powers of his personality—living faith. 100:3.7
• a dynamic religious faith is not subject to precise definition 102:6.1
• faith is the only method to become God-knowing 102:6.5
• faith is the only passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment. 101:10.6 193:1.2
• Religious faith is the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence 196:0.1 196:3.1
• all true faith is predicated on profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness. 132:3.5
• faith is a prerequisite for the appearance of miracles and for doing spiritual work 158:5.2 158:6.4
• Faith is the act of recognizing the validity of spiritual consciousness—something which is incapable of other mortal proof. 103:7.13
• faith in the Absolute God is the source of that divine energy which will remake the world 94:6.8
• That faith is concerned only with the grasp of ideal values is shown by the New Testament definition which declares that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. 99:5.8
• faith is supreme assertion of human thought 3:5.9
• faith is trusting Father as a little child trusts his parent 100:7.7
• faith is unconscious spontaneous expression of experience with God 196:0.6
• faith is the victory which overcomes the world 4:4.9 34:7.6
• Jesus’ faith was even more than mortal decision and human determination; it was a wholehearted consecration of himself to such an unreserved bestowal of love. 196:1.1

Faith and facts

• The reason of science is based on the observable facts of time; the faith of religion argues from the spirit program of eternity. 102:1.2
• Facts never quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may. 195:7.1

Effects of faith

• Reveals twelve reactions: 101:3.4-16
• # Causes ethics and morals to progress
• # Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God
• # Generates profound courage and confidence
• # Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity
• # Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality
• # Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory
• # Persists in the unswerving belief in God
• # Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul’s survival
• # Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload
• # Contributes to the continued survival of altruism
• # Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief
• # Goes right on worshiping God
• All things are possible to him who really believes. 158:5.2
• brings man to union with God 94:6.8
• creates modesty, uprightness, wisdom, courage, knowledge, and perseverance 131:3.2
• destroys uncertainty, conflicting desires 142:5.3 196:0.5
• dominates mode of living 101:8.1
• expands mind, reinforces personality, enhances power to love and be loved 159:3.12
• even though faith are faint flickers they are sufficient for survival 40:5.19 155:6.17
• it is possible the forgiveness of sin through faith 138:8.2
• Faith fosters and maintains man’s soul in the midst of the confusion of his early orientation in such a vast universe 132:3.10
• survival faith is a living faith, and it increasingly manifests the fruits of that divine spirit which first inspired it in the human heart. 176:3.3
• faith initiates man into world of divinity 103:9.6
• the eye of faith locates invisible Father 32:3.6 155:6.4
• faith makes believers secure in kingdom 147:8.5
• makes truth of sonship with God factual in experience 40:6.4 186:5.9 193:0.3
• Mortal man earns his status as an ascension candidate by his own faith and hope. 3:5.16
• The cry of the righteous is the faith act of the child of God which opens the door of the Father’s storehouse of goodness, truth, and mercy 138:8.8 146:2.8
• faith acts to releases Adjuster’s superhuman activities 110:3.2 132:3.6
• Genuine faith removes mountains of material difficulty which may chance to lie in the path of soul expansion and spiritual progress. 144:2.6
• faith reveals God in soul 101:2.10
• reveals our light to world 191:5.3
• allows us to acquire righteousness, a righteousness which would exceed the righteousness of slavish works which some of the scribes and Pharisees paraded so vaingloriously before the world. 170:3.1
• strengthens character, creates happiness 140:5.6
• successfully withstands all intellectual sophistries 101:3.11
• transforms First Cause into God of salvation 101:2.3 102:6.4
• transmutes potentials to actuals in spirit world 110:6.17
• triumphs over evil, sin, and iniquity 194:3.2
• By faith we are justified; by faith are we saved; and by this same faith are we eternally advanced in the way of progressive and divine perfection. 150:5.3
• Faith has won for the ascendant pilgrim a perfection of purpose which admits the children of time to the portals of eternity. 26:4.14
• healings
• faith in disease treatment is powerful remedy 90:4.1-2
• faith literally compelled healing in the presence of certain creative forces and personalities (149:1.1,8) 152:0.3 166:2.5
• faith made leper whole when he met Jesus 166:2.5
• faith made Veronica, the woman afflicted with a scourging haemorrhage, whole 152:0.3
• as the faith of Josiah the blind was slight, he was asked to do an action necessary for healing with the purpose of encouraging him 164:3.14

Historically

• the covenant of Melchizedek with Abraham represents the great Urantian agreement between divinity and humanity whereby God agrees to do everything; man only agrees to believe God’s promises and follow his instructions. 92:4.7 93:6
• evangelists of Jesus must go forth on this short mission wholly unprovided for; they must trust the Father for food and shelter and all other things needful. 163:4.12
• Lao-tse also likened faith to the “attitude of a little child” 94:6.5
• the thief on cross showed faith in his last moment 187:4.1

Jesus’ faith (196) (100:7.7)

• Jesus has faith in us 157:4.6 (171:7.5,8) 196:1.5 196:2.10
• Jesus had a talk with Nabon, leader of the Mithraic cult in Rome, about truth and faith, in which he said: Man tends to crystallize science, to formulate philosophy and to dogmatize truth. Faith is the inspiration of the spirit-infused creative imagination. Faith acts to release superhuman activities. 132:3
• Jesus’ faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual 196:0.5
• Michael requires all creatures to master the faith-trust 120:1.3

Parables regarding faith

• * the parable of barren fig tree 166:4.9 176:2.6
• * the parable of the grain of wheat 174:5.8
• * the parable of leaven 151:4.3 178:1.15
• * the parable of mustard seed 140:8.27 151:4.2 178:1.15
• * the parable of new wine into fresh wineskins 147:7.2 176:1.7
• * the parable of pearl of great price 140:8.28 151:4.5
• * the parable of persistent widow 144:2.5
• * the parable of seed in good soil 137:8.12
• * the parable of seed of living being 178:1.15
• * the parable of sewing on old garment 147:7.2
• * the parable of three loaves 144:2.3
• * the parable of treasure in field 151:4.4
• * the parable of vine and branches 180:2 193:2.2

Warnings regarding faith

• Faith cannot be nourished by an ideal philosophy; indeed, it is, with science, the very source of such a philosophy. 103:7.1
• Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living faith 195:10.8
• Through spiritual faith man gains insight into the love of God but soon discovers that this spiritual faith has no influence on the ordained laws of the material universe. 104:2.3
• The surest safeguard for the creature throughout the long struggle to attain the Father, during this time when inherent conditions make such attainment impossible, is tenaciously to hold on to the truth-fact of the Father’s presence in his Sons. 32:3.6 50:1.3
• lack of faith is shown in several degrees of disloyalty 89:10.2
• Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. 101:8.2
• Faith must not be overmuch influenced by its emotional consequences. 103:9.11
• we must obliterate the dead center of indecision. 91:9.5
• the fountain of faith sometimes is polluted by the poisons of fear 111:7.5
• the qualitative status of the immortal soul is wholly dependent on the grasp of living faith upon the Paradise-potential fact-value that mortal man is a son of the eternal God. 110:6.18
• if the religious longings are only material, science will ultimately deprive the materialist ot his faith. If religion is spiritual, the progress of science can never disturb faith in eternal realities and divine values. 155:3.6
• faith should be childlike, not childish 170:3.2 196:0.12
• faith sometimes leads to recklessness and presumption 149:4.4
• Faith, human religious insight, can be surely instructed only by revelation, can be surely elevated only by personal mortal experience with the spiritual Adjuster presence of the God who is spirit. 103:7.1
• truth only possessed by exercising faith 132:3.5
• we must walk by faith and not by sight 158:6.4 174:0.2
• faith is not a way to fight against the universe or a hostile world. It is not a means to console oneself in the midst of difficulties. It is not a simple illusory compensation for sadness. It is not an intellectual reflection or a mystical meditation 196:0.3-4
• works of faith come not forth from doubting unbelief 158:5.2

Bible parallels

Passages that the paragraphs cited above parallel, quote or reinterpret, from Duane Faw’s Paramony cross-references. Hover a reference to read it.

• Divine things must be loved 102:1.1 — 1 Jn 4:7-8.
• Have childlike trust 102:1.1 — Mt 18:3; Mk 10:15; Lk 18:17.
• God is no respecter of persons 166:4.11 — 2 Ch 19:7; Job 34:19; Sir 35:12; Acts 10:34; Ro 2:11; Ga 2:6; Ga 3:28; Eph 6:9; Col 3:11.
• Those who spurn kingdom 166:3.4 — Lk 13:25-27.
• No entry to fold 166:3.4 — Mt 7:21-23; Mt 25:11-13.
• Stand at door and knock 166:3.4 — Rev 3:20.
• Fight the good fight of faith 166:3.4 — 1 Ti 6:12; 2 Ti 4:7.
• With God nothing impossible 26:5.3 — Gn 18:14; Jer 32:27; Mt 19:26; Mk 10:27; Mk 14:36; Lk 1:37; Lk 18:27.
• My kingdom is not of this world 158:6.2 — Lk 17:20-21; Jn 18:36; Ro 14:17.
• Faith is the price of entry 137:8.17 — Hab 2:4; Ro 1:17; Ga 3:11; Eph 2:8; 1 P 1:9.
• Repent, flee wrath to come 138:8.8 — Mt 3:2,7; Lk 3:3,7.
• Change of mind by faith, the new born 138:8.8 — Jn 3:3-8; Ga 2:16; Ga 3:2; Jm 2:14.
• Faith is the open door 138:8.8 — Mt 17:20; Mt 21:11; Lk 17:6; Acts 14:27.
• Whosoever will may come 139:12.7 — Ps 50:15; Jl 2:32; Zec 13:9; Mt 7:24; Mt 10:32-33; Mt 12:50; Mt 16:24-25; Mk 3:35; Mk 8:34-35; Lk 6:47; Lk 9:23-24; Lk 12:8; Jn 3:15-16; Jn 4:13-14; Jn 11:25-26; Jn 12:46; Acts 2:21; Acts 10:43; Acts 13:26; Ro 9:33; Ro 10:13; 1 Jn 2:23; 1 Jn 4:15; 1 Jn 5:1; Rev 22:17b.
• Faith gets one through the door 140:1.4 — Ro 1:17; Ro 3:28; Eph 2:8. *Work in fruit of spirit, to continue*: Ga 5:22-23; Eph 5:9; Jm 2:17,20,26. *Doers of Father's will enter heaven*: Mt 7:21.
• Be you perfect 140:10.1 — Gn 17:1; 1 Ki 8:61; Lv 19:2; Dt 18:13; Mt 5:48; 2 Co 13:11; Jm 1:4; 1 P 1:16.
• John's, a baptism of repentance 140:10.1 — Mt 3:2; Lk 3:3; Acts 13:24. *Fellowship with God*: Mt 12:50; Mk 3:35; Lk 8:21; Acts 2:42; 1 Co 1:9; Eph 3:9.
• Truth shall make you free 141:7.6 — Jn 8:32.
• Jesus was truth made manifest 141:7.6 — Jn 1:14.
• Gospel of the kingdom 150:5.2 — Mt 4:23; Mt 9:35; Mt 24:14; Mk 1:14-15. *Salvation: believe, accept*: Jn 1:12; Ro 3:21--4:5.
• Just shall live by faith 150:5.2 — Hab 2:4.
• In Lord I have righteousness 150:5.2 — Is 45:24.
• My arms enfold people 150:5.2 — Is 51:5.
• Soul joyful in love of God 150:5.2 — Is 61:10.
• The Lord our righteousness 150:5.2 — Jer 23:6; Jer 33:16.
• Clothe son with robe of divine 150:5.2 — Is 61:10; Zec 3:4.
• Beware the leaven of Pharisees 157:2.2 — Mt 16:6; Mk 8:15; Lk 12:1.
• Eyes see not, ears hear not 157:2.2 — Jer 5:21; Ezk 12:2; Mk 8:18.
• Rich young ruler 163:2.4 — Mt 19:16-20a; Mk 10:17,19-20; Lk 18:18,20-21.
• Keep all the Commandments 163:2.4 — Ex 20:3-17; Dt 5:7-21.

See also

• trust

What links here