Last summer Sue and I rode the Ferris Wheel at Carolina Beach for the first time. If you saw me that day, you would have noticed that I was more nervous than the average person is to ride a Ferris Wheel because I have an all too real fear of riding Ferris Wheels. When I was a young boy, the carnival used to come to our town every fall and I loved all the rides, including the Ferris Wheel, until I didn’t. You could say my faith got shaken in the safety of Ferris Wheels. One year I was there when they were assembling the rides, and I saw the people that were putting them together or should I say I saw the condition of the people putting the rides together. They were all drunk or high on drugs and I asked myself the question, do I have enough faith in them to put that Ferris Wheel together correctly? Was I willing to put the wellbeing of my life in their hands? The answer was no, and for years I would not ride on a Ferris Wheel because the object of one’s faith matters. In that situation, the object of my faith to ride a Ferris Wheel had to be in the men that were assembling the ride. I decided the object of my faith was lacking the proficiency for me to put my life in their hands.
When it comes to our spiritual life, we need to determine what is the object of our faith. For some people, the object of Christianity is the church. Some churches actually push this kind of thinking, but any church, including ours, will be found insufficient to meet all of our spiritual needs. Some people think of the pastor or a spiritual leader as the object of their faith. Others will look to a family member they admire as the object of faith. Many people look to themselves as the object of their faith. They may think, “Other people have let me down so the only person I trust is myself.” All of these people, including ourselves, will fall short of meeting our needs for time and eternity. Only God should be the object of our faith because He alone can meet our every need for time and eternity. This Sunday we will start to look at the life of Abraham on the Journey of Faith, as a man who made God and God alone the object of his faith. We will see from Hebrews 11:8-12 and other passages how Abrahm did this and the blessing it brought to him and others. Join us as we consider how the Object of our faith Matters.