The Bible teaches us that we “walk by faith and not by sight.” While that certainly looks good on a coffee mug or a t-shirt, it’s much harder to put that principle into practice. Sometimes, blind faith is hard. As humans, we have a natural inclination to know what is next. However, there are times where God wants us to blindly trust Him. If you’re struggling with the concept of taking your next steps without knowing where you’re going, you’re not alone. Trust is hard, but trust in God is always worth it.
2 Corinthians 5:6-7 (ESV)
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.
When Paul wrote this popular verse to the Corinthian Church, he was speaking about the fact that while we are living in this world, we are away from the place where God dwells. While we have countless promises in Scripture that there will be a day where we get to see God Himself with the eyes in our glorified bodies, while we are living in this world, we are walking by faith. We know that He is actively working in our lives. We know that He is living in us through the presence of the Holy Spirit. However, we cannot physically see Him, which means that we have to rely on our faith.
Have you ever played Pin the Tale on the Donkey? If you’re not familiar with the game, the premise is simple, and it’s usually played at children’s birthday parties. You get blindfolded, spun around in a circle until you’re nice and dizzy, and then you have to stick a tail on a large photo of a donkey. You can’t see where you’re going, but if you’re going to participate, you have to move.
Our spiritual lives are largely the same. We cannot physically see God. We don’t have the benefit of walking with Christ in the way that the disciples did. We can walk with Him through the presence of the Holy Spirit and the truths contained in Scripture, we cannot rely on what we physically see. If you’ve ever heard it said that “seeing is believing,” that principle doesn’t apply to the Christian journey.
Instead, we trust God to lead, guide, and direct us, even when we can’t see what’s next. What does walking by faith look like? How can you walk by faith when every natural tendency that you have is telling you to wait until you can see what’s next? Scripture is filled with examples of people who trusted God, even when it defied human logic. We can learn from then so we can truly embrace what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.
Abraham
Genesis 12:1-4 (ESV)
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Before we dive into the example that Abraham set, we should discuss some cultural norms of the day. First of all, people in Biblical culture didn’t move around like people do today. While reading this, you may think it’s no big deal that Abraham left the land of his ancestors. Perhaps you moved away for college and now live on the opposite side of the country from where you grew up. In our world, people relocating is completely normal. That wasn’t the case in the Bible. Instead, people usually stayed in the place where they grew up because everything they had was there. They didn’t relocate for a better job because everyone relied on farming and gardening to live. In order to do that, you had to have land. The best way to get land was to inherit it. Therefore, people stayed where they were from and then passed their land on to their relatives.
Abraham’s call to leave his family and his kindred also meant leaving his way of life. God wasn’t just calling Abraham to leave the only people he knew; He was also calling him to leave the only lifestyle he had ever known. That’s even more impressive when you realize that Abraham was 75 at the time! Even though people in the Old Testament lived for hundreds of years, 75 certainly wasn’t young.
Abraham didn’t stop and ask questions. He didn’t try to negotiate with God. Why? Because he knew that whatever God was promising him was better than what he was experiencing. Abraham knew that God wanted to make his life better, so he went. We have the same promise. When God calls us to step out of our comfort zones, we can rest in the promise that He only does so because He has something far better for us.
Ruth
Ruth 1:16-18 (ESV)
But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
Ruth was a Moabite. Because of that fact, she had not grown up in a home where she learned about God. However, she married a Jew. Not long after they were married, her husband died. Tragically, so did her brother-in-law and her father-in-law. This left Ruth with her mother-in-law (Naomi) and her sister-in-law (Orpah). In Old Testament times, women did not work. These three women were suddenly left with no man to provide for them. Naomi told both of her daughters-in-law that they should return to their families, and Orpah took her up on the offer. However, Ruth refused.
Ruth had no way of knowing what her life was going to look for in the future, but something inside of her caused her to want to stay with Naomi. The answer was found on the back half of the passage that we just read: “Your God will be my God.” Ruth, relatively new to the Jewish faith, realized that the same God who had provided for Naomi and her family in the past would provide for them going forward.
If anyone had a reason to walk by sight, it was Ruth. However, she chose faith. She chose faith that she didn’t have a deep understanding of. However, her insistence on choosing faith allowed her to be the great-grandmother of David, who would become King of Israel. Her faith also allowed her to find a spot in the genealogy of Christ!
If Ruth had turned back and chose what she could see over her faith, she would have never been a descendant of Jesus. When we choose faith over the things that we can see, we open ourselves up to the possibility of being a part of something even greater than we realized.
As disciples of Christ, we are called to be actively engaged in the Kingdom of God. However, part of fulfilling our role often means that we take a step without knowing what is next. Ruth didn’t know what her future looked like, but she knew that she believed in the God that Naomi trusted. We have our own relationship with God and can see examples of His faithfulness in our own lives. With that in mind, we know that we can trust Him with our futures.
A Closing Prayer:
Heavenly Father, help me to look beyond what I can see and walk in the faith that I have in You. I know that Your plans for my future exceed my own. I trust You. In Christ’s name, Amen.