If you want your faith to get stronger, you need to understand what deeper faith looks like. People with great faith have learned to believe even before they see.
This is what we learn from the first verse of the great faith chapter. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1 NIV)
Faith is taking God at his Word. I have heard people say, “God said, ‘I believe it. That settles it.’” If God said it, that settles it, whether you believe it or not. Faith is believing even when we don’t see.
I suppose all of us have said, “I’ll have to see it to believe it.” In the spiritual realm, sometimes, you have to believe it before you can see it. Faith is trusting in who God is and it is believing in what God has said.
A person with deep faith not only says, “I will believe it before I see it,” but they are also willing to obey even before they understand. Noah and Abraham are both great examples.
Put yourself in Noah’s sandals. God said, “Noah, I want you to build an ark.” There had never been a flood. We don’t know that it had ever rained before. Noah was nowhere near an ocean at the time. God basically asked him to build an ark in the middle of the desert. It would be difficult to understand.
And how would you like to be one of Noah’s three sons? The kids at school had to be asking, “What’s your dad doing?” How could they convince their classmates that their dad isn’t crazy? It didn’t make sense. How could anybody understand? For that matter, how could Noah truly understand what God was up to?
The thing I love about Noah is that he obeyed God even when he didn’t understand. So much of what he was being asked to do didn’t make sense.
But Noah teaches us a valuable lesson: You don’t have to understand everything to obey. In fact, Noah is one of the first examples we see in the Bible of someone who obeyed God even before he understood.
Obedience typically involves taking some risks. It did for Noah and his family. When God has given us specific instructions, he expects us to listen and obey.
When we do, we’ll reap the reward of trusting God and taking him at his Word. God has promised to bless our obedience.
You may read Steve Greene’s blog at pastorgreene.wordpress.com or you can email him at [email protected].
