Truth #17 – No Matter What Our Circumstances Say, the Word Of God Will Prove True If We Have Faith

When we walk by faith, we live in two realities.

A few minutes ago I did something many people regard as sheer superstition. Sitting alone in my apartment, I closed my eyes and spoke out loud to a being I cannot see but who I believe is real and able to hear me. We call this activity prayer, and I spoke to God.

When we pray, we show we believe in two realities. We believe in a natural world we can see and discern with our senses, and we believe in an invisible, spiritual reality.

I do many other things that show I believe this spiritual world is real. I give significant amounts of money to Christian organizations. And I read, study, and teach the Bible daily. I stand on the sidewalk and hand out Christian literature.

So I believe the natural world is real, and I believe the invisible, spiritual world is real. And as a result 2 Corinthians 5:7 is true of me: “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

Two realities

Having faith does not mean acting as though the seen world is unreal. It simply means we do things we would not do if we believed only in the things we can see. We believe in two realities, not one.

Moreover, based on God’s Words, we believe in future realities we cannot now see but we are sure will happen. God’s promises are real because they are his eternal plans expressed in his unbreakable words.

For example, two realities were at work in the lives of Abraham and Sarah. One reality was the natural reality of their inability to have children. The other reality was God’s promise to make Abraham the father of people as numerous as the stars in the sky.

One reality was, Abraham did not own any land in Canaan; while the other reality was what God had promised: that Abraham would possess all of Canaan.

God told Abraham he wanted him to live in many ways as though the promised reality was already present. God wanted Abraham to live in the tension of the two realities. Both were real, but only one was manifest in current circumstances.

The tension of two realities

How to manage that tension between two realities is where things can get complicated. At one point in the tension, God told Abram, whose name meant exalted father, that he wanted him instead to use the name Abraham, which meant father of many. So Abram was to conduct daily life using a new name that would be awkwardly ironic to most people. An old man with an old wife with no children was to use a name that suggested he was the father of many.

Consequently whenever Abraham used his new name, there would be some who thought Abram in his old age was losing touch with reality. Can you hear people talking behind Abraham’s back? Have you heard about Abram? It’s so sad. It was painful enough that he had the name exalted father; now he is calling himself father of many! He’s losing his senses.

There were other tensions for Abraham. God told him to live as a sojourner in Canaan. The land would be his someday, but for now Abraham did not own one square inch of it. Nevertheless God commanded him to live there.

God also told him not to regard the firstborn son he had by Sarah’s handmaiden, named Ishmael, as the fulfillment of the promise that he would have many descendants. Although that led to awkward situations, Abraham complied.

Conviction of things unseen

Hebrews 11:1–2 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ² For by it the people of old received their commendation.”

These verses show why there can be a difficult tension to navigate for the person of faith. People of faith have perfect assurance and conviction of things no one else can see, things they hope for but that are not yet visibly real. They believe in another reality that current circumstances deny. How do you explain that to others without their thinking you are foolish?

Well, you cannot do it. You have the promise from God; you have the faith in God’s words and so you have another reality; they do not and they likely cannot. At best they might call you a dreamer or a person with vision; at worst, they will think you need to face reality and get on with it, or that you are simply a religious kook.

But that is the life of faith. Notice that Hebrews 11:2 says God commends people of faith who are willing to live in the tension of these two realities. One of the takeaways of Hebrews 11 is God approves of people of faith. He designed the faith life. He wants us to have assurance and conviction based on his words even as others have doubt and disbelief.

Based on God’s invincible words, the person of faith lives in two realities. People without faith are living only in the current reality of natural-world circumstances. The unseen reality makes perfect sense to a person of faith; whereas it is nonsense to others without faith.

Noah the nut case

If anyone understood the tension of two realities it was Noah. Until the rain started falling, he was a delusional old man. He was spending boatloads of money, working long days for decades, building a gigantic boat on dry land. He was preparing for a coming reality—the flood—that God had revealed to him, but which no one else could perceive.

Now that is a tension between two realities. That was hard to navigate and make any semblance of appearing normal to others. In their eyes Noah was wasting time, money, energy, and resources. He was crazy! And what was this nonsense about filling the boat with animals? Can you imagine how hard it was for Noah to invest everything he had in something that was beyond his and others’ experience? Even in retrospect it is hard for us to conceive. How did he do it?

“By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household” (Hebrews 11:7). He did it by faith in God’s Word. The tension of two realities is the inescapable nature of the faith life. The tension of perhaps feeling like a fool and appearing to others as a fool is the nature of the faith life. And the more sensible others are, the more foolish they will think you are.

The current reality is real, but temporary. The coming reality is unseen, but certain. What makes the unseen tangible for the person of faith is God’s Word.

Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).

Jesus said, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit….” (John 6:63). His words have spiritual reality.

Continued next week

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)