The second answer is this: faith is “the conviction of things not seen.” This is just a logical extension of what the author has already said because many of the things our Father leads us to hope in have yet to come to pass. But faith gives thanks to God as though they have already come true because faith is this deep inner conviction that if God says something, it’s as good as done.
So, faith listens to God and believes that what he has said is reality, even though it may not be presently visible or provable, in the scientific sense of that word. For example, when our Father says that one day Jesus will come again and explode onto the sky with a glory we cannot imagine so that every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow before him and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father—even though we haven’t seen this with our eyes, we cherish it in our hearts because we know that our Father is faithful, that he’s trustworthy, and that he will surely do all that he’s said he will do.
In the fall of 2000, the Lord led me to spend a great deal of time meditating on these verses, and I remember being out on a prayer walk in the mountains one day thinking about what they mean. I can still remember exactly where I was at the time and what the sky looked like and where the sun was positioned in the sky. As I thought about these verses, I eventually said to the Lord, “Father, I want so much to believe what you’re teaching me here. I want to have faith. I want to be sure of what I hope for and I want to have deep conviction about things I don’t see. I want to believe that what you’ve said is in fact true but, Father, I’ve been disappointed so many times and I don’t know how to live like this. I don’t know how to have faith.”
Then, as I sat in silence and listened to the Lord, I eventually heard his still, small voice saying something like this: “Son, you can be sure of what you hope for when you hope for what is sure.” ’ll leave it to God to say whether or not he actually spoke these words to me, but I will also say with all boldness that this sentence suddenly popped into my mind, it squares with Scripture, and it's has marked my life for many years now.
As I digested and meditated on this sentence, I came to see that the only thing that is sure is the being of God, the purposes of God, and the promises of God. Everything else is sand, no matter how solid it seems. The great empires of the world, including the United States of America, are only sand and they will not stand the test of time. The great financial systems and products of the world are only sand, as we clearly saw in 2008 and following. Great companies and good companies and jobs that seem so secure are, at the end of the day, only sand and cannot be trusted in. So many kinds of relationships in our lives, as important and permanent as they seem, are only sand. Physical and mental and emotional health is only sand. Life itself is only sand. It’s a vapor. It’s a blade of grass that can be taken in a moment and that, even if long, is only a moment anyway.
Friends, nothing but God is sure in this life. His being is sure. His word is sure. His will is sure. His ways are sure. His purposes are sure. His steadfast love is sure. His faithfulness is sure. And since our hope is only as sure as what we’re hoping in, we Christians are learning to hope in God and God alone. As we grow in this grace, we gain a deep conviction that everything God has said will come to pass so that his purposes and promises are as certain to us as if they’d already come about. Again, faith is this deep inner conviction that if God says something, it’s as good as done. In other words, faith is trusting in God.
No comments:
Post a Comment