As I nervously peered down at the ground 100 feet below, my balance shifted. In a brief moment of blind panic, I realized I was going over the cliff's edge.
     There was no turning back. That's how I felt when a group of friends took me rock climbing a few years ago. The idea sounded like fun - until we arrived at the rock face and put on climbing gear to rappel down. I've never been fond of heights and didn't take much comfort in my only lifeline being a climbing rope thinner than my index finger.
     A few moments later, I found myself gripping that rope (which was tied to a nearby tree) and standing with my back to the deadly precipice. With white-knuckled fear, I began leaning backwards. Rising panic gave way to sudden exhilaration as I discovered the rope would hold, and I bounded down the cliff wall in what turned out to be one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.
     Later that day, as we all sat around a campfire, one of my friends, a Christian, began to talk about the difference between belief and faith. He went on to say it was one thing to believe (or intellectually understand) that the rope could keep us from falling. But it was another thing entirely to put our faith (or trust) in that rope by using it to hang 100 feet off the ground.
     I grew up in a family that went to church, and I believed that Jesus Christ was God, lived a perfect life, and died to pay for man's sin. But up to that point, my belief was simply intellectual. I now realized that without personally taking hold of the forgiveness Jesus offered, I was helpless to save myself - I needed to cling to Him as desperately as I clung to that rope.
     In Ephesians 2:8-9 it says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast."
     That day I reached out to receive God's gift of forgiveness and experienced the same kind of exhilaration as stepping off that cliff - I knew my sins were paid for, and I began a relationship with a loving God who has been active in my life ever since.
     Contrary to what I feared, God didn't take the fun out of life. Quite the opposite - I cannot imagine a life that is more fulfilling and meaningful. It is not without difficulties, but I discovered that even hard times have a beneficial purpose.
     "Faith is not the denial of evidence. Faith is the confidence that the evidence I see is more than sufficient to make me trust God for the evidence I have not seen yet."  -- Ronnie Collier Stevens