Living By Faith

Our home is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Early morning trips in and around the mountains are often accompanied by fog. Thick fog obscures the view of anything else. In a sense, we drive by faith. When the sun burns away the fog, beautiful mountain vistas become visible. The mountains are just as real when the fog is present, we just can’t see them. When we can only see the part of the road immediately in front of us, it is the fog that seems more real. But it is temporary. It will dissipate.

Sometimes life can be foggy. Our circumstances feel heavy and burdensome. We live in two different planes. The one we are most conscious of is the one we bump into on a daily basis because it is right in front of us, physically. The other one–the one we are less aware of because we can’t see it–is the spiritual realm. The fog of this life obscures our view of eternal things. Because our perception is faulty, the physical realm seems most real to us. It is a reality. It must be dealt with, but it is temporary. This world is passing away.

God calls us to live by faith, not by sight. It is impossible to please Him without faith (Hebrews 11:6). The Bible recounts the stories of men and women who are commended for their faith. By faith, Noah built an ark before anyone saw rain. By faith Moses was able to lead the Israelites through the Red Sea, and it was by faith the walls of Jericho came down. Their faith was in God–not in the things they could see.

The things we see in our physical world and our circumstances are temporary. But the spiritual realm, where God is working is more real than anything we can see. So, we live by faith.

The Bible defines faith as confidence in what we don’t see. (Hebrews 11:1). It is living in light of eternity, knowing that this world is not all there is. God is not limited by what we can see. His work cannot be determined by how things appear in the here and now. He is always working, and we can only see glimpses of what He is doing behind the scenes. We persevere in prayer because we can trust in the faithfulness of God to hear and answer our prayers.

In His grace, God does give us glimpses of the unseen world. Answered prayer, wise insight that didn’t originate in our own minds, and hearing His counsel to us through Scripture are all evidence that God is doing something beyond us.

Faith is pressing on when the fog obscures our view. We can live by faith when we remember who God is. It is living in the confidence that God will do what He says. In the darkest of times, He is working in ways we may not see in the moment. It is knowing that the things that make no sense to us make sense to God. It is trusting in His perfect character and knowing He will always do what is right.

So we 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 (2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV).

Blessings,
Phyllis

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