Seeing in the Dark
The Theme for this month is ‘I can’t see! Yet I trust in You.’ This is such an oxymoron because we have been taught to only trust what we see. We have been told to only believe in hard facts. Nothing can be greater than what we can prove for ourselves. Well, this is such a large contrast to what the Bible teaches us. God expects us to live beyond our physical presence. He expects us to ‘See in the Dark.’ If we approach the Bible from the natural, we will miss it every single time. For us to have a successful Christian life, we must understand there is another world outside of ours. We have two worlds: the spiritual world, and the physical world. Our physical world is governed by physics and other laws. The spiritual world is governed by faith, love, and other spiritual laws. We must understand that the spiritual world influences this physical world. When we say, ‘I can’t see! Yet I trust in You,’ it is all relative to our position when we cannot see. But God, who is in the spiritual world and is greater than us, can see clearly. When we say, ‘See in the dark,’ from our perspective it is dark, but not from God’s perspective. When we feel lost, confused, and afraid; that is our perspective. From God’s perspective, He knows where we are, He knows what we should do, and He has provided enough faith for us to overcome.
I hope you caught my drift; I am talking about faith. Faith is what enables us to see in the dark. Faith is what gives us the confidence to trust God when we do not know where we are going. Faith is what gives us the confidence to trust in the spiritual world. What is faith? Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for.’ This part shows the difference between hope and faith. Hope fuels our faith, but faith brings what we are hoping for into reality. ‘…the evidence of things not seen.’ Faith is what brings the spiritual world to manifest in our physical world.
Let us use salvation as an example. Salvation is a product of the spiritual world. God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit all reside in the spiritual world. For us to receive anything from them, we need faith. Romans 10:17, “17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” The word of God that we heard at salvation is John 3:16. John 3:16-17, “16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” This word generated faith in us to believe in salvation. We could not see salvation, but the word of God gave us the faith to believe in salvation. Look at Ephesians 2:8-9, “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith…” Faith was the access point that we used to get saved.
Faith is the currency of the spiritual world. During the ministry of Jesus, you see many people getting healed through faith. In Hebrews 11:6, “6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” God is pleased when we choose to trust Him in the middle of our darkest times. Faith is simply us choosing to believe everything in the Bible. Let me show you something about faith that I learned….
Luke 17:5-10, “5 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” 6 So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7 And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? 8 But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. 10 So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”
The servant in this parable is faith. Most of us have faith for a little bit, but what Jesus is telling us is to not give up believing until we have what we are believing for. We all remember the times that Jesus mourned about His disciples and said, ‘ye of little faith.’ He cannot be talking about the size of their faith because he just said if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we can be effective in the kingdom! If we look in the Greek definition of the phrase ‘ye of little’ there are couple of definitions. The one I like the most defines the phrase as ‘brief’ or ‘short’. What Jesus was saying is their faith was brief. They had faith for a few seconds, minutes, or hour, but then they gave up believing. They had a short burst of faith. Faith is like a servant: we do not let our servant, faith, to sit down until we get what God has promised us.
I challenge everyone reading this newsletter to stand strong and believe what God says in His word. We need to step out in faith and not be like Peter when walking on water. When the waves got too big, he took his eyes off Jesus and stopped believing that Jesus is greater than the wave. In this life, our faith is what will enable us to overcome a lot of waves and finish the race strong.
