Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar;
Habakkuk 2:4: “Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him, but the just shall live by faith.”
What I find amazing is that this is the only time “faith” is used as a transitive noun. In fact there is only one other time that the word “faith” emuwanah is translated as faith in the Old Testament, ie., Deuteronomy 32:20: “for they are a perverse generation, children in whom is not faith.
As far as the KJV version goes, those are the only two times you have emuwanah translated as faith. The rest of the time it is translated as faithfulness, steadfastness, sure, etc. Faith tends to be a New Testament word. The Greek word pistis is used 239 times in the New Testament. Thayer and Smith and in fact most your Christian Greek Lexicons refer to pistis as a conviction and confidence that God exists as the creator and the bestower of salvation.
Oh, come on now, a conviction? Confidence? That is just so, so elite Christian. Did they even look at the Septuagint? For the word pistis is used for the word emuwanah. If that is the case and I believe it is, then pistis is more than just a confidence in God.
Emauwanah comes from the root word “aman” which I talked about in an earlier devotional. In it’s primary state it is a picture of a nursing mother. The picture of the total dependence of a baby upon it’s mother to receive it’s nourishment, strength, and protection. Not only that, what else do you get from that picture? When that baby is nursing, nothing else exist in that baby’s world but it’s mother. Not being a mother I can not say for certain, but I guess when you were nursing your baby, nothing else existed but that baby. Your total focus and attention was on that baby. You would not have hesitated to die for that baby at that moment. You greatest feelings of love came at that moment and the greatest feelings of love for the baby toward it’s mother came at that moment.
Come on women, why keep these feelings to yourself. You are suppose to be a gateway for us men to understand God. We don’t have the opportunities that you women have to experience a love which is so close to God’s love, you have to explain it to us. Well not us, but to your husbands. This is just too personal and should only be shared with your husbands and no one else. Ever sit down with your husbands and tell try to explain to them the love, the emotions you feel, felt, when you gave birth, when you first held that baby, when you nursed that baby? Then explain to your husbands that this is what faith is? You need to do it more than once. At times we men can be just a bunch of dumb oxen, it is not enough to talk about it once. For we need to understand that without this kind of faith, total dependence upon God, receiving all nourishment, protection and shelter from Him, looking in His face and seeing the Love Light in His eyes and seeing nothing but Him, we can not please God. This is what pleases God (Hebrews 11:6 without pistis, aman, it is impossible to please God). This is the basis of our salvation (Ephesians 2:8 have been saved through pistis, aman).
Next time you and your husband are intimate on the Sabbath, talk to him about these feelings and explain to him that this is what faith it. That is your duty as a wife. That is your role as a helpmate, a gateway to understanding God’s love. You will stand before God one day and explain why you did not fulfill that duty to your husband.
This is why the enemy attacks the home. This is why in other cultures as Middle Eastern and Oriental cultures woman are second class citizens with the males having power of life or death over women. The enemy will do all he can to prevent a woman from sharing the true nature of faith with her husband. Ever wonder why women seem to out number men in the church?
Aman – pistis – faith is the act of becoming like a baby in a mother’s arms nursing. You become like a baby in the arms of God and draw all your nourishment and strength and dependence from him. Without such faith, it is impossible to please God. For as a mother longs to feed her baby, so too does God long to feed you with the milk of His Word, to hold you, to look into your eyes and see that love and dependence. As it says in Habakkuk 2:20, this is the way we, as the just, shall live.
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