Tuesday, October 4, 2016

The Security of Living by Faith


“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1 NIV)

The photo has been replicated thousands of times by locals, students, and tourists.  People perch themselves on a rock extending out over the beautiful Appalachian Mountains in a place known as Rough Ridge. After seeing it in pictures so many times, finally last weekend I put myself in the same spot.  Comments about the photo included, “Are you nuts?”  “Not sure I'd be sitting there!” “Yikes!” and my favorite, “Let's do work on longevity, okay?”

It looks scary, doesn’t it?  But looks can be deceiving.  Honestly, as I approached the edge, I didn’t know what to expect.  But the rock was solid. I sat down a half a foot away from the edge and slid into position with my legs dangling over the rock.  What surprised me was how safe and secure I actually felt.  Even though my legs were hanging over the edge, the “seat” actually pitched back from the edge so my center of gravity was a foot back and moving away rather than towards the valley below.  So while my wife breathed a sigh of relief when I moved back from the edge, I felt I could have sat there for hours without a care in the world.  

As I looked at the comments on my photo, it brought to mind how many people think faith in God is nuts and living it out even more so.  In my many years working with college students, I have seen this played out time and time again:  parents thinking their kids are unhinged to earn a college degree and then “throw it away” to pursue campus ministry or a life in missions where they will have no certainty of income; students thinking it’s crazy to waste time and money serving others on a spring break or summer mission trip when one could be earning money or having a lot of fun; students’ relatives fretting about the dangers of traveling to another country to serve when “there are so many needs right here at home.”

Like people viewed my sitting on the edge of that rock as crazy or dangerous, so, too, do people often see faith in a similar way.  But what they often see as reckless is far from the reality.  Unlike what many think, walking by faith is not blind. Rather it is based on the accumulated evidence that the Lord is trustworthy.  The Hebrew writer follows his statement about faith with a list of many who had lived by faith, such as Noah, Abraham, and Moses.  The confidence of which he writes is not based upon blind belief, but rather on the evidence of those who had lived by faith and found the Lord trustworthy.

I realized long ago everyone lives by faith, perhaps not in God, but in many other things.  When we apply the brakes of our car, we are doing so in faith; when we flip a light switch in the dark, we do so in faith; when we eat a meal prepared for us by someone else, we do it in faith. It is faith because we cannot guarantee the outcome.  We cannot say definitively the brakes will work, the lights will come on, or the food is not poisoned, but we still have faith.  Why?  Because the evidence is strong that what we hope for is going to happen.  That strong evidence gives us confidence in the outcome even though we cannot prove it.  I climbed out on the edge of that rock because the overwhelming evidence suggested it was safe.  Thousands of people had done it before me and no one to my knowledge had ever fallen off.  The evidence was further confirmed as I saw others do it right before I did. And then I experienced it for myself and gained even more confidence because it was indeed safe.  

Walking with the Lord, contrary to popular opinion, does not require blind faith.  There is plenty of evidence that He is trustworthy in whatever He promises or asks of us.  It may look and feel scary, even nuts, but the reality is far different.  Living by faith in the Lord is very secure.  Just ask those who have done it.

© Jim Musser 2016








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