Walk by Faith

Faith… a word that’s thrown around a lot in the Christian world. But, I feel like it might be a dying part of our lives… and seldom do we realize it. Biblegateway defines faith as “the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true (Phil. 1:27; 2 Thess. 2:13). Its primary idea is trust. A thing is true, and therefore worthy of trust. It admits of many degrees up to full assurance of faith, in accordance with the evidence on which it rests.” So, to have faith is to actually believe that an idea is true and trust in this idea. Hebrews 11:1 describes faith as the “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Something we don’t see?!? In every other facet of life, many will not believe something until you see it. To the extent where the phrase “you gotta see it to believe it,” has been around longer than I have been alive.

But, that is exactly what God wants, to believe in what you can’t see. It is easy for someone to see something then say “ok, its true.” But, when someone trusts in you with out all of the evidence in front of them, that’s true faith. Trying to put myself in God’s shoes, I thought, well why would he ask this of us? Why not make it a little easier for us? Why not give us some glimpses of God so we can trust in him that much more? Then I sat on that idea and came up with the conclusion that God doesn’t want people to follow him that need everything in front of them to believe him. God doesn’t do negations like the police do during a hostage situation. You can’t ask for this part of God and that part and in return you will then turn yourself over to him.  That’s just not how he works.

So, after covering the whole meaning of what true faith is, I thought about the areas of our life that we should walk by faith on a daily basis. The biggest aspect is prayer. As Christians, we pray. We pray when we wake up, we pray at meals, we pray with family, and we pray at church. Prayer is something that we should cover our self with but the action following prayer is having faith. Having faith that your prayer was received, having faith that a real God actually heard it and having faith that he will give you an answer back. But, here is where I get frustrated. So many people pray and pray and the pray about something. And after a while of praying, they never feel like they got a definite answer from God. And in return, they end up doing nothing about the situation. God wants you to take control, move on with what you feel might be right and he will guide you through the process. In Exodus 14, the Israelites are pissed at Moses because he lead them away from the Egyptians and slavery but then they find themselves practically cornered by the Egyptians. The Israelites then say to Moses , “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

Then Moses replied by saying, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.  The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

And right after Moses said this, the Lord spoke to Moses. The Lord wanted Moses to be faithful and trust that God would guide them through their trouble. So the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. ¹⁶ Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground.

God said “why are you crying out?” He was asking Moses, why are you just sitting there praying? Now, in way am I saying that God wanted Moses to stop praying. He wanted Moses to keep going, move on! I will guide you through it, just don’t sit here and make me make your every move for you.

This is the faith God wants from us. As a college student, I meet so many college students that have no idea what they want to do with their life. But, there are also some who have that feeling and tell me, well I am just going to take a couple semesters off and wait for God to tell me what to do. God is saying MOVE ON! DON’T JUST SIT THERE AND WAIT ON ME! God didn’t give us the gift of free will for us to wait for him to do everything.

So, please, stay in constant communication with God but keep moving, walk by faith and trust that he will guide you after you have taken the first step.