"Why Faith?"
Part 4 - "Faith and Reality"
If God is who the Bible declares Him to be - and He is - and if all things, including ourselves, are utterly dependent on Him for the beginning and continuation of our existence - and we are - then we live in reality only as we trust the Lord Jesus Christ to be the very Life of our lives.
"To live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21).
"In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).
Because God in His essence "is a spirit," reality in its essence must transcend the physical and the tangible (John 4:24). Before He made all things, our Lord existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a spiritual, invisible substance. The Lord Jesus, of course, became and remains human, dwelling forever more in a glorified physical body. We cannot presently see, hear, or touch Him, however, and the Father and the Holy Spirit remain intangible. Thus, "we walk by faith, not by sight," and thus, we live according to reality - God's reality - only as we live our lives "seeing Him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27).
Let us consider this in specific, practical terms. What is most real about the difficulty (or difficulties) we face in this present hour? The troubles are real, no doubt. Problems are problems. Pains are pains. Perplexities are bewildering, and heartaches sometimes become heartbreaks. Christians are not Gnostics who deny the reality of the creation God made and sustains. Again, however, what is the greatest truth and essence of our challenge? "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1). Only as we walk by faith, therefore, affirming the Lord Jesus to be present and involved in the difficulty, are we living according to Truth. Why faith? Reality demands it. Anything less or other as the governing conviction in our sensibilities means that we miss the great Actuality of our existence.
This truth applies not only to trouble. God is the reality of our blessings and of our everyday, mundane experience and responsibility. Again, we "live and move and have our being" in Him. Faith affirms the reality we cannot presently see, hear, or touch. It also believes that which often transcends our understanding. We must therefore determine to "see" Him who is invisible, that is, to believe the Word of God that declares the presence and working of God in all things. No greater challenge exists in a fallen world whose appearances often belie truth and reality. We must therefore heed the calling of the Lord Jesus to see the Unseen as the real. Because it is…
"Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
(John 7:24).
"I am… the truth… Thy Word is truth."
(John 14:6; 17:17)
Weekly Memory Verse
"In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world."
(John 16:33)
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