Believing Faith

 

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

—Hebrews 11:1

 

Faith is tangible. It is material proof of things that can’t be seen but do exist. Faith is not believing something is real when it isn’t, and you can’t believe long and hard enough to make something real. Faith is proof of what exists. Just because something is not seen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

There are spiritual realms that exist. They just exist in a realm that we can’t see or perceive with our natural senses. To determine that something doesn’t really exist because we can’t see, taste, hear, smell, or feel it, doesn’t make sense. We have electricity that provides power to smart televisions. We have smart televisions that receive wireless signals that can’t be seen. All we have to do to reveal that unseen electricity exists and to prove that unseen wireless signals exist, is plug in that television and turn it on. That is physical proof that something in the unseen realm exists. When we see and hear the television is when the electricity and the wireless signal becomes real to us. They were real before the television was plugged in and turned on. They just existed in a realm that we couldn’t sense.

In just the saw way, everything that Jesus’ finished work of grace has purchased for us is already real. It exists in a spiritual realm that we can’t perceive with what we naturally sense. We have to believe that salvation and the absolute truth of wholeness is ours. We have to believe that the gift of His life purchased our righteousness, our healing, and our deliverance from the works of evil. Our faith then is the material proof that takes what is already true in the spiritual realm and makes it true in the natural realm. 

Faith gives substance. It brings to life what we hope for. Hope is a strong anticipation of something good. Without hope, we can’t have faith. Hope is visibly seeing what can’t be seen. It is seeing things in your heart that can’t be seen. Imagination is the ability to see things in your heart that you can’t see with your eyes. So hope needs a positive imagination to thrive. A position imagination that gives hope comes when we dwell on the truth of God’s Word in the spiritual realm instead of dwelling on the negative we can see in the natural realm.

 

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

 

God is the God of hope. He is the God who gives vision. He is the God who gave us the ability to imagine. We want our imaginations to envision what God promises. God wants to fill us with joy, peace, and faith to produce nothing but His positive vision in our lives. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish this. We allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us what He wishes. We can’t do this on our own strength. Where we are weak, God is the one who is the strong one. When we visualize the vision that the Holy Spirit instills in us, we have a strong expectation of hope. We have Him, the strong one, empowering us.

 

Faith is a noun. Believe is a verb. For faith to be put into practice, joy and peace need to be true is our lives. A person without joy and peace can have faith, but they are unable to believe.

 

Romans 15:13 also says that we are to abound in hope. This is a distinguishing quality of those who really believe God’s promises. For instance, if we really believe God wants us to prosper in health—that God desires us to have good health—we will have joy, peace, and hope concerning the future. This is true for every facet of our lives and with those for whom we pray. A lack of joy, peace, and hope are signs that we don’t believe. A person who doubts really doesn’t know what He believes. It is hard for him to receive what Jesus has purchased for him with His life.

 

Where am I? Where are you? Only each of one of us can answer that question. Only each of us can make the choice to believe or not believe. I can’t do it for you, and you can’t do it for me. Believing God for what we can’t see is our faith in action. And faith that believes God’s truth is an alive faith. I want an alive faith! I believe the hope I can’t see but which I envision. 

 

“For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance” (Romans 8:24-25).

 

A person with a believing faith perseveres in believing. He sees into the spiritual truth of what Christ has purchased for him and continually makes it his own. 

 

© 2023 Lynn Lacher

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