Faith is much more than the holding of a certain set of beliefs. Faith, I suppose, is both the rule of life and the source of strength. By a "rule of life," I mean that we act according to our faith. This seems to me to be the force especially of Hebrews 11, but also of how Hebrews generally discusses faith. Faith is trust, and to have faith in something is to put trust in it. If we have faith in Christ, that means we trust that Christ's teachings are correct and that we ought to live our life by them. This can apply to many things. For instance, my roommate had faith that the Baylor Basketball team would make it to the Elite Eight and therefore he bought tickets to the game before it was certain that Baylor would make it there. The team made certain promises, my roommate believed those promises and (more importantly) conducted his life according to his belief in those promises (and was rewarded, but that's a different story).

On the other hand, faith seems to carry the force of enablement as well, and this aspect of faith seems limited to the relationship we have with God. I suppose one could say that my roommate's faith in Baylor's team gave him the confidence to purchase tickets, however I believe that the power we receive through faith in God is far superior to this "confidence of action" which may be attributed to other kinds of faith. In chapter 11, the heroes of the Old Testament do many wondrous things and all of it was by faith. I do not believe that they were capable of accomplishing things and, like the modern movies tell us, all they had to do was "believe in themselves," or "believe that they could do it." Rather, they had to know that they had no hope of doing any of it, but they believed that God could do it through them. Thus, since they put their trust in God and conducted themselves according to that trust, they were empowered by God to accomplish the tasks He set before them.