What is faith?

On Friday in assembly we explored the background to Abraham's faith in God. What was it that made him leave his home and travel to new places, why was he so confident that God would provide?

The key we found was in his relationship and knowledge of God. His faith was based on the fact that his personal experience was that God could be trusted. He he seen God at work, an active part of his life and he had learned from this that God was faithful and would honour his promises.

We explored this in some fun ways- considering why we trust different people and how we can be confident that some one might behave in certain ways. This exploration involved chocolate bars, eggs, a marker pen and a tin of beans! If you want to find out more then you will need to encourage the children to share all.

This week we begin to consider the story of Joseph and how God was faithful to him, despite some pretty horrendous circumstances and happenings in his life. Being sold into slavery by your brothers is not something anyone would wish to happen to them, but God used this to bring Jospeh to Egypt, to save the people from famine and to use Joseph to move on the story of the people of Israel.

Hebrews 11 v 1 tells us that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Abraham and Joseph certainly lived that out and their lives and God's faithfulness to them remains an encouragement to us all.

As our song in assembly on Friday and Monday proclaimed.

10,000 reasons for my soul to sing!