The Fine Lines That Separate Faith from Fantasy and from Presumption

What is the difference between faith in the invisible God and fantasy? Or the difference between faith and presumption? The lines that separate faith from fantasy and presumption can be fine, but they are definite, and they are clear. Failure to recognize those lines can be the difference between life and death, between truth and error, between a solid, fruit-bearing walk with the Lord and spiritual deception.

“Faith” is a poor choice of words to define total confidence in an unseen enitity that really exists and is not imaginary.

An example of that trust is given in the Bible, that of Abraham, a state of reliance on Jehovah God that has influenced the whole world of humans. In Romans 4:20-21 (New Testament) the Apostle Paul writes that Abraham was fully persuaded that God was able to bring about whatever He promised, so evidently seen in the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his own son Isaac as commanded by God, in blood-shedding way, tht Jehovah would bring that son back to life with no harm done, to fulfill all the other promises for Isaac’s generations yet to happen.

Another equally meaningful is convincement or conviction as applied to the action of the Holy Spirit to convict a human condemned sinner of one’s sin, of God’s existence and righteousness, and of eternal judgment that most certainly will affect one’s future (John 14-16).

What then about the fantastical relm of Disney’s Mickey Mouse? Or the Allah of Mohammed’s imaginative creation of the same calibre as Mickey? Or the Christs of the invention of heretics misleading their followers into a false “christanity”? The kinds that became the religious organs of the state, the kind that migrants from Eurpe or Asia to the Americas sought to scape? The ones of the same kind as the Biblical Jesus (see the scripture of 2 Corinthians 11:3-4); or christs of a different kind, like those claimed in more recent “visions” that require special optics to read their “scriptures”?

Are these comic narratives, these religions — are they not fantastic, tales generated by con artists to gain the power over gullible other humans?

Romans 4:10-21 (AV): ¹⁹And being not weak in faith, he^Abraham considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb: ²⁰He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; ²¹And being fully persuaded that, what (H)e^God had promised, (H)e was able also to perform.

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That defines and demonstrates saving faith well enough for me. Understanding the convincement/conviction/persuasion of the Holy Spirit and the preached Word, I fully committed my trust unreservedly that JESUS SAVES, and saved me immediately upon my earnest plea alone, and placed me on the path of progressive sanctification according to His Will and my submission to it.

Of late, I've tried to stay away from using the words "faith" and "belief" or "believer" or "Christian" because all these are so overused that they have become so trite or meaningless to so many that use them profusely. not really understandng their definition or meaning in talking about spiritual matters.

My own preference is to converse in terms that still have clear distinction, not ambiguous at all, whilst attempting to discuss the doctrine of the apostles as given by their Savior first-hand.

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