The Nature of Faith

When I was finishing up Bible College, I interviewed at a church for my first full-time ministry position.  The interview had gone well, and I was waiting to hear back from them, to see if I was going to be offered the job or not.

In the interim period between when I interviewed at the church and before I had heard back from them, I was visiting another church with a friend.  After the service, we stayed and chatted with some of the young adults from the church.  One young man asked me about myself, and I was telling him about finishing up Bible College, having an interview, and waiting to hear if I was going to be offered the job.  I shared with him that the interview had gone well, and that I had been seriously praying and fasting, pressing into God, and that I really felt that this church was the right place for me.  I wouldn’t know for sure until I got the phone call, but I was excited that I had landed on God’s will for the next phase of my life.

“How do you know?” he asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“How do you KNOW it’s the right place?  Did you hear an audible voice from heaven, or what?”

“No,” I sort of chuckled.  “Nothing that clear.  I have just been praying, meditating, fasting, and being quiet before the Lord, and I really feel in my heart that this is the right place.  I feel His peace on me when I think about it.  That’s why I feel that I am going to be going there.”

The guy rolled his eyes.  “So you haven’t actually HEARD from God that you’re supposed to go?  You’re basing this all on “feelings” and that peace?  You’re not positive?”

I found myself getting a little defensive.  “Well, I can’t say that I’ve EVER actually “heard” a voice from God.  And I’m not basing this on “feelings”; I’m basing it on what I feel in my heart after much prayer and fasting.  I can’t say that I’m positive, but I am confidant.  And actually, since you brought it up, I’ve found that the peace of God can be a pretty dependable roadmap to finding the will of God for my life.”

The conversation went on for quite some time.  This young man was earnest and obviously was committed to following Jesus, but we were just not on the same page on this issue.  I wasn’t trying to tell him what to do with his own walk with God, but I was simply trying to explain that, in my experience, God’s will for us isn’t always crystal clear in every situation.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said to me.  “You should never do anything until you’ve HEARD from God.  You should never step out into anything until you are POSITIVE that you are in His will.  Otherwise, what if you are wrong?  What if you’ve made a mistake?  I never do anything without being 100% sure that I am doing what God wants, and I have no idea how you can even think about taking this job until you are positive.  How can you step out if you’re not completely sure?”

I’d had enough.  We were never going to agree.  I smiled, shook his hand, and prepared to walk away.  But before I did, I just shared one more simple thought:

“I guess that’s what ‘faith’ is.”

Later that week, a phone call from the church confirmed what I had felt God laying on my heart, and even though I had not seen a burning bush telling me what to do, I left nonetheless and started an amazing season of fruitful ministry in a loving, Spirit-filled, Bible-believing church.

Scripture tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,” (Heb 11:1). The very nature of faith itself is that we trust in something that we cannot fully see.  If we could see God clearly, then it would cease to be faith.  We may fully believe that God is real, and w may have lots of evidence of Him working in and through our lives, but because we have never seen Him, touched Him, or experienced Him face to face, we have to take it on faith that He is there.

Many cannot bring themselves to trust in such a God.  Over the years, I have had many people say to me things such as, “I would believe in God, if I had some evidence.  If something came along that was more convincing then what my five senses tell me, then I might believe.”  But that is the whole point; trusting God transcends what our eyes and ears and brains can prove.  We see His evidence in creation, in His Word, and in our personal experiences with Him in our transformed lives, but still, for all of us, it comes down to a matter of faith: choosing to believe in an invisible God because we trust that He is there.

We can provide much evidence, but we can’t prove that He exists.  And the thing is, we are not supposed to.  When Jesus walked the earth, the Pharisees demanded a miraculous sign from Heaven that would prove once and for all that He was the Son of God; such requests received a stern rebuke from the Christ (Mt 12:38-39).  They wanted clear evidence that their eyes could see, but Jesus would not indulge them.  The nature of faith is that we believe that He is, and we trust that He is, and we live our lives because He is, even though we can’t see Him.

The true way in which we walk with God is made clear by Scripture; we are told that “We live by faith, not by sight,” (2Co 5:7).  What our eyes tell us is secondary to what the faith in our hearts tells us.  What appears before us in any given situation is subservient to what the Word of God tells us.  If everything that we do is simply in reaction to what we can physically see in our circumstances, then by definition, we are no longer walking by faith; we are walking by sight.  The very character of faith is that we trust God, even if what we see disagrees with what His Word says.  We believe, even if we have no natural reason to believe.  We hope, even if our circumstances appear to be hopeless.  In all situations, true faith says, “I believe in a God that is bigger than just what I can see.”

Faith is the most important thing that we have.  It allows us to hold onto God in all circumstances, and to trust Him in all impossibilities.  It is the foundation of our relationship with Him, it is the basis of our salvation, and it is the reason that we can stand with confidence upon His Word: because we believe.

Faith is like a muscle that needs to be exercised; it grows the most through struggle.  Because of this, we will often find ourselves in circumstances where we can’t always see the blessing of God.  That’s the process of the testing: will you still believe, even though you can’t see it?  If your eyes tell you “no”, can you still summon enough hope to say, “Yes!”?

If we can see the answer to prayer, then we are not walking in faith, and so God will take us places where we cannot naturally see anything.  If we want to walk with Jesus, we will find ourselves in places where there is no earthly reason to believe that something is going to come to pass.  By being there, we are challenged to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2Co 4:18). This is what true faith is (Heb 11:1).

We know that our lack of faith can actually limit God’s work in our lives.  James talks about a man coming to God in prayer, saying “he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does,” (Ja 1:6-8). We know that when Jesus walked the earth, he occasionally met crowds who opposed Him.  In His hometown, He found much doubt at His powers, because people could not believe that the little boy they once knew was now a prophet, and so Scripture tells us “he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” (Mt 13:58).

This thought has often discouraged the Church over the years.  We can easily feel as though our lack of faith is the root cause of every problem in our lives.  But here’s the good news: we don’t need much faith in order to please God!  Jesus said that even a mustard seed’s worth of faith was more than enough to move mountains (Mt 17:20).  If that is all that is required to release God’s great power, then whatever little faith we can muster with our strength in the rough times must surely be acceptable to Him!

The book of Hebrews tells us that “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him,” (Heb 11:6). Or, put a more positive way, faith pleases God, and leads to reward!  By holding onto what we believe, even when it seems impossible, we are walking in the footsteps of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and many other heroes of the faith that are listed in Hebrews 11.  These spiritual giants faced incredible obstacles in their lives, but they never let go of their trust in God.  Because of this, they are counted among the great in Scripture, and their legacy is left to inspire us.  We live by faith, not by sight.  My eyes may tell me what reality looks like, but God’s reality supersedes what my eyes can see.

Knowing this, I press on, and hold onto my confident expectation that God will prove Himself once again.