Dan Phillips: What Faith Is and Does

Dan Phillips returns this month to talk about Faith; specifically What Faith is and Does. Dan is pastor of Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, Texas, and author of The World Tilting Gospel and Godâ€™s Wisdom in Proverbs. Heâ€™ll be speaking at the upcoming Team Pyro conference hosted by Pillar of Truth Ministry in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania on Justification by Faith. The topic of our discussion today is one of Danâ€™s topics for that conference.

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An Outline of the Discussion

The inspiration for this episode is an upcoming conference on Justification by Faith. Dan is a speaker, and his topics are this one, as well as “Righteousness: Forensic and for Living.”
It's not hard to find error on what faith is. It's a feeling, it's blind, or what we do to get God to give us what we want.
The Law of First Occurrence states that, all things being equal, the first place something occurs in the Bible is sets the stage for all of the other references to that. Faith is first described in Genesis 15, follows the story of Sodom & Gomorra, of Abraham's faith that God would provide him offspring. It sets the stage for both Faith and Justification.
Faith involves:
1. An explicit word from God.
2. Understanding of the Word.
3. Crediting God with the ability to do it.
4. Embracing that Word.
And so Dan defines faith as the embracing of a specific word (promise) from God.
Another way Dan describes Faith (in his book The World Tilting Gospel) is: Recognizing, Realizing, and Resting.
Believing (Trusting) God for things that He never promised is slander.
We can ask God for anything, and really we should ask God to provide the things we need, it's expecting everything that we ask for that is the error.
We are called to trust Him in anything and everything He has promised us.
Often, God gives us better than we ask for, but not on our timeline.
Faith is the activity by which we lay hold of Christ.
Faith causes a change in our lives.
Faith is obedient. This obedience issues from salvation.
If you don't act on that which you say you believe, it would be right to question whether or not you really believe it.
Cults believe in grace, they just have an improper understanding of grace. For example, the Mormons have a view that grace gets us to salvation after all that we can do.
Everything that God does in us, He does in and through Faith.
Paganism is all about working “god” to our own ends, to get what we want.