Walk By Faith, Not By Sight
By: Kristen L. McNulty
Reprint rights available on request. Email the author at kristenmcnulty@hotmail.com.
Lately as I was thinking over the trial I’m in right now, I found myself disappointed and wondering why there hasn’t been a breakthrough by now. I mean this hasn’t been something that started yesterday, it’s gone on for years and in many ways I’m no further along today than I was a year ago at this time. But then I was reminded of something so vital and true: "we walk by faith and not by sight." (2 Cor. 5:7)
To me the situation might look the same with very little forward progress, but I’m not called to base my evaluation based on what I see, I'm called to base my evaluation on my faith. More specifically the God I placed my faith in and who He is and what He can do. Walking by faith not by sight means taking our eyes off our circumstances and putting them on Jesus. It means not basing our decisions on our feelings, but on the truth of His Word. It means acknowledging that right now He is at work in ways that we can’t see or even fathom and trusting that He is "working all things for our good." (Romans 8)
The Definition of Faith
The Bible defines faith this way:
"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see." (Hebrews 11:1)
Walking by faith not by sight means trusting God when life makes no sense, following Jesus even if the other path looks so much easier and choosing to invest our time, money and resources in God’s kingdom rather than wasting our lives vainly trying to build our own.
As Augustine put it: "Faith is to believe what we do not see, and then the reward of this faith is to see what we believe."
Because no matter how hard this life is, our faith assures us that a new day, a new life is coming. One free from pain and suffering and one all of creation is waiting with us for. Romans 8:18-25 tells us:
"Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)"
It's Not Easy, But Is Rewarding
Walking by faith not sight is not easy, but it is rewarding because we know who our faith is in. And if Jesus loves us so much that He died to cover our debt, we can walk in assurance knowing that even if we don’t understand, we can trust that His love hasn’t left us now and we can anticipate the day when we will be released from sin and suffering because of who He is and what He's done for us.
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