www.laurareimer.net
| |

By faith….<3

www.laurareimer.net

Good morning to you and Happy Friday!

This morning I had a devotion that led me to read Hebrews 11:1-40 and it is such a nice, cool morning here I decided to sit out on the patio and do that. These passages always make me cry. The repetition of the phrasing “by faith…” is very effective as I read line after line of what “faith” looks like. 

I don’t like the concept much, if I have to be honest. 

I like concrete things that I can see, touch, taste, hear and feel with all my senses and it is backed up by what I know in my gut. 

But faith doesn’t work like that. 

It can’t be explained or proven. 

Hebrews 11:1 says…Faith is the substance of things hoped for..the evidence of things not seen.

I think of things I hope for and then I sit for a moment and realize how these things are without a tangible presence. 

I don’t hope for time to write you this morning…I am sitting here doing it. 

But I hold hopes in my heart for other things that are not real and happening and visible to us. And yet I hope. 

I know personally in my own life hopes that have been dashed and I have watched and loved others who saw their hopes dashed and yet we continue on. 

God didn’t heal in a way we could see. 

He didn’t deliver us from the betrayal like we knew He could.

The relationship ended, the person died too young on our calendar, or suffered too greatly beyond what we had hoped. 

The law passed…the job got eliminated….the lightening struck the house…

and yet we got up again the next day and we turned to God and asked Him for help to carry on. 

We heard of another diagnosis and we prayed and believed for healing.

We heard rumors of war and we prayed for peace that would end the evil and oppression. 

We look around for evidence of revival and we see even more turning away. 

And we continue to pray and hope and share the Good News. 

We believe, in spite of mocking and derision, that there will come a day when He will make all things new and right. 

Faith. 

This is the concrete matter of the thing inside of us that won’t turn away from Him no matter what we can see, touch, taste, feel, hear…it is the intangible that holds us when everything around us falls away and apart. 

The fact that you got up today and prayed one more time? That is the evidence of what you cannot see…faith. 

You didn’t earn it, you can’t muscle it up out of your own smarts…Faith is a gift of grace to us who would prefer to have evidence that can be seen, proven, shown to the world.

 But Hebrews 11: 38 reminds us that the world was not worthy of those who did not receive the promise and yet continued on in faith. 

If you have time today, read through Hebrews 11 and then humbly thank God for the intangible, yet powerful, gift of faith that moves you forward today. 

Take a minute and just ask God to help you fill in the blank with some of the things you are still believing even though you cannot see, touch, taste, hear or feel.

“By faith, (your name)  __________________________________

Share and Save: