The Bible teaches believers to walk by faith not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
gracetidings:with dr doug mamvura
We live in a time where the only visible difference between many professing Christians and unbelievers is the fact that Christians might not be home on Sunday morning.
Over the years, I have heard many sermons and read as many books that teach believers how to walk by faith. I believe it is vitally important as believers to walk by faith. It is 100% essential to our spiritual well-beings and to live an overcoming life in Christ.
What exactly is walking by faith? Until we answer that question, we will live in uncertainty. I know most of us believers know that God’s Word. However, I believe for a believer, walking by faith involves much more than just being convinced that God’s Word is true.
The key to walking by faith involves two crucial heartfelt revelations. One, knowing the character and nature of God and two, understanding our relationship with God.
Believers often talk about the faith and strength of the early church. I have heard many say we need to get back to having the same faith as the early church.
I wouldn’t disagree with that at all but what some of these people fail to see is that the early church didn’t have Bibles as we do today.
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Their faith didn’t come from their daily Bible reading or Scripture confessions. At the most, they had Old Testament passages read to them or Epistles from the apostles. So, what was the source of their faith? I believe they were taught who God is and who they were in Christ. Knowing the true character of God goes a long way in establishing our hearts’ faith and trust in Him.
In addition, when we discover who we are in Christ as believers, it gives our hearts confidence in how we relate to God. The early church didn’t have access to the amount of biblical knowledge we do today, but they did capitalise on their relationship with God.
I love studying God’s Word. I believe biblical knowledge should enhance our relationship with God, not be a substitute for a relationship with Him. It is through having an intimate relationship with Him and His true nature and character that we are able to walk by faith not by sight. When we begin to understand His character, the fact that He is faithful and that it is impossible for Him to lie, we are then able put our trust and faith in Him.
Unless we believe in His faithfulness, you and I will never be able to walk by faith. Our lives will be dominated by what we see, feel, touch, smell and hear. This explains why some of us are not very different from unbelievers apart from the fact that we are in church on Sundays and some of us wear the church regalia.
In Genesis 18:11, we are told that “Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age, and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing”. When Sarah had God telling her husband that “Sarah your wife shall have a son,” she “laughed within herself”. She was overwhelmed by God’s Word given the advancement in her age. She disbelieved what God had said because at that moment she was walking by sight. She just looked at her situation and felt that was a joke.
It took 25 years for her to move from laughing to believing and that is when she then conceived Isaac: “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised”. The key is in the last part of this verse:
“she judged Him faithful”. Had she not judged Him faithful, she wouldn’t have received her miracle. Most of us fail to judge God faithful and this is why we fail to walk by faith. We behave like the way Sarah behaved when she laughed at what God had said about her receiving a miracle. She failed to appreciate that there is “nothing too hard for the Lord”. At least she eventually moved from unbelief to faith resulting in her conceiving a baby at that old age.
We may want to criticise Sarah and yet most of us are like that. We behave like natural man. “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned”. Whenever we hear the Word of God our response is either natural or spiritual depending on our faith and relationship with Him. This is why in the same church, you find one person being healed and the other remaining sick because one’s response could be natural while the other is spiritual.
Let us look at another example where we see a spiritual response in Luke 1:34. We see the angel coming to Mary announcing that she will conceive a Son and yet she was still single. We need to compare her response to that of Sarah: ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?” The angel replied: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Highest will overshadow you.” Mary replied: “Let it be to me according to your word.” Mary’s situation was even more complicated than Sarah’s because she didn’t have a husband and yet she received and accepted what God had said. This is because she judged God faithful. Her conception immediately took place because she believed the Word unlike Sarah who took time to allow that Word to be alive in her spirit.
Abraham was another good example of a person whose life was characterised by faith. Imagine leaving your own home country going to a place you don’t know just because God has said so. That is walking by faith. No wonder he is considered to be the father of faith. He was able to obtain the promise because of his faith in God. “For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying “Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying, I will multiply you. And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. God determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6: 13 -18).
When God says “Surely, I will bless you”, He means it. Every Word of God contains within itself the power to fulfill what it says. This is how you and I should build our faith knowing very well that God is not man that He should lie nor son of man that He should repent.
Abraham believed in the one who gave promises and this is why “contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations” (Romans 4:18).
This is God “who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did” (Romans 4:17). I don’t know how “dead” your situation looks but know that there is a God who can give life to your dead relationship, dead work situation or whatever it is you have given up on. If only you could believe in the One who has made that promise. Have faith in God’s Word that it will accomplish that which it has promised because God is faithful and it is “impossible” for Him to lie. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23).
We have to hold fast to our trust and faith in what Jesus did for us, without wavering. The reason we can be constant in our faith is, because our faith is in Jesus and not in ourselves. Jesus is always the same and He doesn’t change.
l Dr Doug Mamvura is a graduate of Charis Bible School. Feedback: drdoug@corporatemomentum.biz or Twitter @dougmamvura
