One Realistic Hope

I am often looking for a good description of faith. I want to have a description because it is something I think about often. Being able to think about something means you don't have to do the work to redefine all the concepts in a string of thought; I want to be able to arrive at a new idea, practice, or simply move on. That's one reason I love this description of Jesus's gospel vision and faith from Dallas Willard in The Spirit of the Disciplines:

We have one realistic hope for dealing with the world's problems. And that is the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, living here and now, in people who are his by total identification found through the spiritual disciplines.

Why? This faith and discipline yields a new humanity, one for which "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" or "Our Father who art in heaven" does not express a resolve, a hope, or a commitment, but a vision in whose firm grip Jesus' people live with abandon. their vision is one that regards worry about what we will eat or drink or wear as completely pointless. The natural thing for them is to "be careful for nothing," as Philippians 4:6-7 says, "but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." People of this new humanity are not afraid "even if the world blows up, and the mountains crumble into the sea" (Ps. 46:2). Living and dying are the only options and both are transcendentally wonderful, because liberation from fear of death is an inevitable result of living in the faith of Jesus (see Matt. 10:28; Heb. 2:15). That is the faith I am speaking of.

This is the faith, I want to be able to say, "is the faith I am thinking of."