If my existence depends on living a life of perfection, I’ve already failed miserably. Take me now, because if my life depends on perfection, I’m hopeless. Perfection is beyond earth living. If I depend on my own wisdom in decision making; troubles are exponentially multiplied. Even if I seek the advice of successful men and women who seem to have it altogether, it’s just not enough.
What is enough is knowing and believing in Jesus, our Perfect Savior. It is our faith in God who sent His Son to save us that assures us of our redemption. Our decision to trust in Him makes this life worth living. Our faith in God, believing without seeing, is the foundation upon which our relationship with God through Jesus grows in the wide-open spaces of His love, mercy, and grace!
Hebrews 11, The Message
Faith in What We Don’t See
11 1-2 The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.
3 By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.
4 By an act of faith, Abel brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain. It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference. That’s what God noticed and approved as righteous. After all these centuries, that belief continues to catch our notice.
5-6 By an act of faith, Enoch skipped death completely. “They looked all over and couldn’t find him because God had taken him.” We know on the basis of reliable testimony that before he was taken “he pleased God.” It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.
7 By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. His act of faith drew a sharp line between the evil of the unbelieving world and the rightness of the believing world. As a result, Noah became intimate with God.
8-10 By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God.
11-12 By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said. That’s how it happened that from one man’s dead and shriveled loins there are now people numbering into the millions.
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13-16 Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.
17-19 By faith, Abraham, at the time of testing, offered Isaac back to God. Acting in faith, he was as ready to return the promised son, his only son, as he had been to receive him—and this after he had already been told, “Your descendants shall come from Isaac.” Abraham figured that if God wanted to, he could raise the dead. In a sense, that’s what happened when he received Isaac back, alive from off the altar.
20 By an act of faith, Isaac reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau.
21 By an act of faith, Jacob on his deathbed blessed each of Joseph’s sons in turn, blessing them with God’s blessing, not his own—as he bowed worshipfully upon his staff.
22 By an act of faith, Joseph, while dying, prophesied the exodus of Israel, and made arrangements for his own burial.
23 By an act of faith, Moses’ parents hid him away for three months after his birth. They saw the child’s beauty, and they braved the king’s decree.
24-28 By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage. He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going. By an act of faith, he kept the Passover Feast and sprinkled Passover blood on each house so that the destroyer of the firstborn wouldn’t touch them.
29 By an act of faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians tried it and drowned.
30 By faith, the Israelites marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days, and the walls fell flat.
31 By an act of faith, Rahab, the Jericho harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God.
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32-38 I could go on and on, but I’ve run out of time. There are so many more—Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. . . . Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves. They were protected from lions, fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies. Women received their loved ones back from the dead. There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection. Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons. We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless—the world didn’t deserve them!—making their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world.
39-40 Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised. God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.
WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?
Faith is more than believing. It’s living in a way that shows our trust in God no matter what’s going on in our lives.
Hebrews has spoken Truth to us today. Faith is the key to God’s heart. Relentless faith pleases God. Human striving perfection, especially when we boast about what we have done is not what God seeks from us as much as He seeks Faith in Him, trusting that He knows what is good for us and believing that He will do what he says!
God smiles when our faith is evident in our hearts and foundational in our walk as His direction is obeyed with blessed assurance from Him. God is pleased when our lives are laid before Him as an offering and then His character reflected in our behavior as we strive to be more like Jesus, His Son. But perfection? Perfection is only found in Jesus. That’s why only Jesus could be the perfect sacrifice for us. Jesus did what we could not do for ourselves. Faith begins when we truly believe what Jesus did for us—God’s Plan.
By faith, we are led by God’s Holy Spirit to move forward, fully trusting in His love while we learn to walk in His perfect ways; knowing that we are imperfectly earthbound for now. There will be a Day when Jesus comes back to take us to our forever home. Only then will perfection be made complete. But for now, we live by faith, lived out loud in our existence today, as we wait for that Day that will come “soon.”
And “soon” is only in the mind of God in whom we trust and obey.
Lord,
Thank you for reminding us that faith has been shown through the ages to be what we seek most from us. Thank you for building our faith as we live for you here. Thank you for your blessed assurance by reading of the acts of faith from those who have gone on before us. Thank you for saving my soul and directing my path. I trust you with my life for you are Life!
In Jesus Name, Amen
Daily Manna (Coffee with Jesus) 