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. [1] Faith should accept the fact of the presence of the indwelling Adjuster. [2] Adjuster translates sense of duty into that higher and more certain faith in the eternal realities of revelation. [3] Faith and love grounded upon an early training makes faith dependable. [4] Few persons live up to the faith which they really have. [5] The faith from beyond will not fail us. [6] Havoners are strangers to saving by faith. [7] The just shall live by faith. [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. [9] Morontia and spirit reason will augment faith. [10]
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. [11] Our faith limits Father’s bestowal of spiritual gifts. [12] Planetary isolation affords opportunity to exercise faith. [13] Father has predicated finite progress upon effort, creature achievement upon perseverance, and personality development upon faith. [14]
We must fight the good fight of faith. [15] We should exercise the faith at our command instead of yield to evil temptations. [16] Simple childlike faith is only requisite to enter kingdom. [17] We will long use faith and be dependent on revelation if we hope to progress quickly and safely. [18] We must take kingdom in spiritual power and by the persistent assaults of living faith. [19]
We must have faith in certainty and security of Father’s guidance and protection. [20] Faith in effectiveness of human desire to be like God. [21] Have faith in the fundamental goodness of universe. [22] We must have faith in God alone, that is truth, beauty and goodness personified and infinitely more. [23] We should have faith in God and on our fellow man. [24] We should have faith in Jesus’ words. [25] Our personal faith in the exceedingly great and precious promises of God is what ensures our becoming partakers of the divine nature. [26] We should have faith in the eventual triumph of divine justice and eternal goodness. [27]
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. [28]
Faith is the act by which man earned God’s favor. [29] Faith always is triumphant over doubting. [30] Faith is the antidote to insecurity. [31]
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. [32] Faith is a living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. [33] Faith is a condition for an effective prayer. [34] Faith is the connection between moral consciousness and the spiritual concept of enduring reality. [35] Connection of moral consciousness and spiritual reality. [36] Faith is a dependence on God which yields assurance. [37] Faith is an effective armor against sin, iniquity, and evil spirits. [38]
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. [39] Religion is evolutionary man’s supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and “endure as seeing Him who is invisible. [40] Faith is the energy of a better life. [41] Faith is one of the fruits of the Spirit. [42] Faith is a gift of God. [43] Faith certainty is the greatest technique for dealing with all superficial contentions. [44]
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. [45] Faith is to religion what sails are to a ship; it is an addition of power, not an added burden of life. [46]
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. [47]
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. [48] Reason, wisdom, and faith are man’s highest human attainments. [49] Man’s sole contribution to growth is the mobilization of the total powers of his personality—living faith. [50] A dynamic religious faith is not subject to precise definition. [51] Faith is the only method to become God-knowing. [52]
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. [53] Religious faith is the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence. [54] All true faith is predicated on profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness. [55] Faith is a prerequisite for the appearance of miracles and for doing spiritual work. [56] Faith is the act of recognizing the validity of spiritual consciousness—something which is incapable of other mortal proof. [57] Faith in the Absolute God is the source of that divine energy which will remake the world. [58]
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. [59] Faith is supreme assertion of human thought. [60] Faith is trusting Father as a little child trusts his parent. [61] Faith is unconscious spontaneous expression of experience with God. [62] Faith is the victory which overcomes the world. [63]
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. [64]
The reason of science is based on the observable facts of time; the faith of religion argues from the spirit program of eternity. [65] Facts never quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may. [66]
Reveals twelve reactions: [67]
All things are possible to him who really believes. [68] Brings man to union with God. [69] Creates modesty, uprightness, wisdom, courage, knowledge, and perseverance. [70] Destroys uncertainty, conflicting desires. [71] Dominates mode of living. [72] Expands mind, reinforces personality, enhances power to love and be loved. [73] Even though faith are faint flickers they are sufficient for survival. [74] It is possible the forgiveness of sin through faith. [75] Faith fosters and maintains man’s soul in the midst of the confusion of his early orientation in such a vast universe. [76] Survival faith is a living faith, and it increasingly manifests the fruits of that divine spirit which first inspired it in the human heart. [77] Faith initiates man into world of divinity. [78] The eye of faith locates invisible Father. [79] Faith makes believers secure in kingdom. [80] Makes truth of sonship with God factual in experience. [81] Mortal man earns his status as an ascension candidate by his own faith and hope. [82] 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. [83] Faith acts to releases Adjuster’s superhuman activities. [84] Genuine faith removes mountains of material difficulty which may chance to lie in the path of soul expansion and spiritual progress. [85] Faith reveals God in soul. [86] Reveals our light to world. [87]
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. [88] Strengthens character, creates happiness. [89] Successfully withstands all intellectual sophistries. [90] Transforms First Cause into God of salvation. [91] Transmutes potentials to actuals in spirit world. [92] Triumphs over evil, sin, and iniquity. [93] 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. [94] Faith has won for the ascendant pilgrim a perfection of purpose which admits the children of time to the portals of eternity. [95]
Faith in disease treatment is powerful remedy. [96] Faith literally compelled healing in the presence of certain creative forces and personalities. [97] Faith made leper whole when he met Jesus. [98] Faith made Veronica, the woman afflicted with a scourging haemorrhage, whole. [99] 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. [100]
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. [101]
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. [102] Lao-tse also likened faith to the “attitude of a little child”. [103] The thief on cross showed faith in his last moment. [104]
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. [106] Jesus’ faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. [107] Michael requires all creatures to master the faith-trust. [108]
Faith cannot be nourished by an ideal philosophy; indeed, it is, with science, the very source of such a philosophy. [122] Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living faith. [123]
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. [124]
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. [125] Lack of faith is shown in several degrees of disloyalty. [126] Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. [127] Faith must not be overmuch influenced by its emotional consequences. [128] We must obliterate the dead center of indecision. [129] The fountain of faith sometimes is polluted by the poisons of fear. [130]
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. [131]
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. [132] Faith should be childlike, not childish. [133] Faith sometimes leads to recklessness and presumption. [134]
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. [135] Truth only possessed by exercising faith. [136] We must walk by faith and not by sight. [137]
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. [138] Works of faith come not forth from doubting unbelief. [139]
See also: UB 102; UB 101:8; UB 196; UB 100:7.7.