I have trained myself (after much reminding) to say the word confidence when I hear the word faith. This happened after many years of hearing faith tossed around with abandon—like so much of the Christian-speak vocab—and used to mean, usually, belief in, but also assurance, assuredness, trust, hope, theological belief system, and my denomination’s belief statement.

I’ll take Hebrews 11:1 in the NIV any time as my go-to, trustworthy, and helpful definition of faith for me as a Christian: Heb 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

It bothers me a little that my favorite translations define faith as assurance—somthing that’s offered and given to me by someone else, which has its uses, I’ll admit—rather than confidence, which I take to mean something I have created in and of myself and own by myself. Maybe I’m splitting hairs. But I just love how saying confidence makes me feel when someone says faith. Confidence. Yah. More about this later.

I have issues with the NIV (New International Version) in other spots, but they sure got it right about faith in my book.