当代著名的心理学家艾理斯（Albert Ellis）博士说：「一个人的信仰决定他的行为和性格。」我们今天的经文，是在艾理斯之前大约三千年写下的，它以更简洁的形式写下了这个真理。

我们可以从两种方向去思想生命──我们可以从哲学家、诗人或历史学家的说话，归纳出生命的意义；我们亦可以从神的圣言中寻求人生的真相。我们或是相信神的话，为此而活，或是对它全然拒绝。如果我们认为先知不知道自己在说甚么，而宇宙间根本没有神迹这回事，那么我们就会像希伯来书的作者昨天所告诉我们的──从敬虔的生活方式中退却。然而，圣经的教导却是要我们凭信心而活。

让我们再次来聆听神对哈巴谷所说的话：「惟义人因信得生」（哈二4）。信心，就是接受神的话，并且倚靠神的话。我们相信神所说的话，不为甚么，只因为那是神自己说的。希伯来书十一章列出的信心伟人就是这么做，他们并没有甚么理由去相信神所告诉他们的话，除了只是因为那是神所说的。为甚么亚伯拉罕要带儿子以撒上摩利阿山？为甚么他准备将儿子献为祭？只不过是因为神这么说了。我认识有一个小男孩，有人问他「信心是相信神所说的话」这句话的意思时，他说：「因为神对祂自己所说的话有信心，所以我们也必须对神有信心。」

A man's belief," says Dr Albert Ellis, a well-known modern-day psychologist, "determines both his conduct and his character." Our text for today, written almost 3,000 years before Ellis, puts the truth in an even more succinct form.

There are two possibilities before each of us as we look at life: we can base our conclusions about the meaning of life on what the humanistic philosophers, poets and historians tell us, or we can base them on what God tells us in His Word. Either we take the Word of God and live by it - or we do not. If we take the attitude that the prophets didn't know what they were talking about and there are no such things as miracles in the universe, then we do what the writer to the Hebrews told us about yesterday - we draw back from the godly way of life. The Biblical way is living by faith.

Listen to the word given to Habakkuk once again: "The just shall live by his faith" (Hab. 2:4, AV). Faith is taking the Word of God and relying on it. It involves believing what God says, simply and solely because He said it. The heroes of faith listed in Hebrews 11 did just that - they had no real reason for believing what God told them, other than the fact that He had spoken. Why did Abraham take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah? Why did he prepare to offer him as a sacrifice? Simply because God had spoken. A little boy, when invited to comment on the statement, "Faith is having confidence in what God has spoken," said: "God has confidence in what He has said - so must we."