Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Philip Yancey
Devotional: 6 Key Truths About Faith
The interesting thing about faith is that many Christians use the word faith so much and so often that we can lose the true meaning of it. It can be as basic as believing in something or trusting something that you can’t see and placing your hope in a certain outcome and all points in between.
Regardless of how you define your personal faith or how you look at the faith of others, here are six key truths about faith:
Faith requires you to look with God’s eyes
God knows everything. His ways are not our ways. Unfortunately, human beings tend to be very, very limited and quite shallow with what we see. Thankfully, God often sees something completely different than what we see.
Real faith requires seeing with the eyes of faith. If the Bible promises something and you apply that promise to your situation, you might not see the promise in your life. But real faith requires you to look at your situation through God’s eyes, and that is reflected in his promises.
Human limitations don’t limit God
It’s very important when trying to understand faith that it can be easy to get caught up in our limitations and to define what’s possible based on human definitions. The great news is that none of that matters much to God because there is no limit to him. He is completely powerful and limitless. We cannot bind him with our own insecurities, superficiality, pride, or imagination. He goes beyond whatever we’re capable of.
God looks past conventional wisdom
In human reality, there are actually several layers to reality. There is the empirical reality — what you can see, touch, smell, feel, and hear — and then there’s human reality.
In short, we tend to agree that certain things are real not so much that we can perceive them but because they are agreed upon realities. A lot of science is like this. A lot of the law is like this. Conventional wisdom is definitely like this.
How this impacts faith is that God looks past conventional wisdom. In many cases, we let conventional wisdom limit us. But if we are acting out in faith, we have to understand that God often exceeds or overrides conventional wisdom regarding what’s possible.
God’s vision reveals God’s glory
God has a vision for you. You have a destiny in God’s eyes. And this vision is tied closely with God’s common vision for his children, which is salvation. Salvation reveals God’s glory and it reveals his infinite love for all of us.
Seeing with eyes of faith means seeing God’s strength
When you choose to see your situation with eyes of faith, you choose to tap into God’s strength. Let’s face it. If you’re going to look at your challenges with your own strength, it’s very easy to get discouraged but when you tap into God’s strength through eyes of faith, you can see what’s possible. You regain that sense of possibility that enables you to transcend whatever is limiting you.
Faith and trust go hand in hand
It’s impossible to have faith without trust. It’s impossible to trust without faith. They go hand in hand. They are different from each other, but they are closely interwoven. You can only unlock faith if you choose to trust, and faith continues to unfold because you continue to trust.
