MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — The challenge of a walk of faith is something a lot of people grapple with on a regular basis. Alan Floyd, lead pastor, Cottage Hill Baptist Church in Mobile has boiled the essential elements of Christian life down into a new book called “These Three: A believer’s guide to faith hope & Love.” He talks about what inspired this book.
Guest: Over the years of being a pastor I have been asked many many times, what does God expect? Is there a way to boil down the essence of living a Christian life. When you really examine the scriptures from First Corinthians 13, the book of Hebrews, Colossians we see this theme that runs through the scriptures that says basically in essence you boil it down to these three: faith, hope and love. So really what I wanted to give believers is a resource in which they can understand in simple terms, what is faith, what is hope, what is love, and what it looks like lived out in the Christian life.
Anchor: So how are these three things in an essential part of Christian life?
Guest: We see this theme throughout Scripture and really, when you understand church history, the first Christians, the early Christians. This is what they actually understood as God’s expectation or Christ’s expectation of them. So it really is the fundamentals of the faith.
Guest: How do you differentiate between faith and hope?
Guest: Faith is the confident belief and obedience in the word of God. Regardless of your circumstances or the consequences. It’s really this confident obedience in the word of God that that’s what faith is. Hope is more of the confident expectation of something good. The Bible tells us that Hope is the anchor of the soul, and so we’re in many ways we are to rely on our faith and rest in our hope.
Anchor: Talk to me about love. How is love an attribute and not a feeling?
Guest: Right? Certainly love is an attribute, but it’s really it’s an attribute of God. He possessed it before he had someone with whom to show it. The Bible says that actually, God pours out his love into our hearts by his Holy Spirit, we know that feelings come and go but love is this attribute of God that he pours out in our heart, and really it is our purpose, our ultimate purpose and the command of God we have the great commandment to love God with all of our hearts or minds or soul, our strengths, and to love others were to love God and to love others.
Anchor: What do you want people to learn with this book?
Guest: If there’s ever been a time in which I think that we need faith and hope and love, it’s now. I think sometimes we pick up the Bible and we can be overwhelmed with all that it says, and all that and the expectations are so. My hope is that we can really put it in more simple terms.
For more on These Three A Believer’s Guide to Faith, Hope, & Love you can find the book at the pastor’s site or Amazon.