What is faith? Faith is my acceptance of God's fact. It always has its foundations in the past. What relates to the future is hope rather than faith, although faith often has its object or goal in the future, as in Hebrews 11. Perhaps for this reason the word chosen here is `reckon'. It is a word that relates only to the past -- to what we look back to as settled, and not forward to as yet to be. This is the kind of faith described in Mark 11:24: "All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." The statement there is that, if you believe that you already have received your requests (that is, of course, in Christ), then `you shall have them'. To believe that you may get something, or that you can get it, or even that you will get it, is not faith in the sense meant here. This is faith -- to believe that you have already got it. Only that which relates to the past is faith in this sense. Those who say `God can' or `God may' or `God must' or `God will' do not necessarily believe at all. Faith always says, `God has done it'.