What is Faith?
What Is Faith?
Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness. (Gen. 15:6)
Walking by Sight
In Genesis 12 and Genesis 15:1, God promised Abraham that He would bless him. And one of those blessings would be that Abraham would have many children, becoming the father of a great nation. In Genesis 15:2–3, Abraham expresses his own doubts about God’s promises. The main reason he doubted was that he was walking by sight. His “sight” told him that he was too old to father children, that his heir would not—could not—come from his own body, as God promised.
Walking by Faith
In Genesis 15:4–5, God told Abraham that what he saw with his human “sight” did not correspond to God’s reality. God would intervene and enable Abraham to father a child despite Sarah and Abraham’s advanced age—a promise Abraham ultimately chose to believe despite what his eyes were telling him. Faith always involves accepting God’s version of reality over our own.
This happens initially in salvation where our human “sight” tells us we have to earn God’s favor. At that point we must accept God’s version of reality: salvation is by grace through faith, not works.
The walk of faith continues in like manner. All the days of our lives we must trust God’s view of reality over what our sight tells us. Yes, it can be a little scary sometimes, but the alternative—relying on our own wisdom—is far more dangerous.
Bottom Line
Faith always involves a question of trust, and it is a day-to-day walk. Are you trusting in what your sight tells you is real today or in what God’s Word tells you is real?