Responding With Faith

Responding with Faith

Read: John 20:24-29

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

John 20:29

“All unbelief is the belief of a lie.”

—Horatio Bonar

IN WORD Not only does this blessedness apply to the initial faith we have in our Savior; it is the sum of the Christian life. We are constantly asked to stake our lives on an invisible God and a risen Savior whom we do not see. His footprints are all over history, so it isn’t a baseless faith. There is nothing naive or blind about it. It is entirely rational and rooted in experience—ours and others’. But it is still often hidden to our five senses, and when we let those senses rule, we find the life of faith difficult.

Thomas found the life of faith difficult, at least at first, in those early days when Resurrection seemed like such an impossibility. Would he have been a Christian in these days, when the Savior’s ascension is considered ancient history? Though He lives to make intercession for us, He is hidden to our eyes. Those who depend too heavily on their eyes will miss the blessings that come only by faith. They will be suspicious of the many promises of God, as though there is a fine-print legal loophole to all of them. They will wonder whether Scripture is a reliable revelation of His character. They will more and more find the invisible God “unknowable,” while those with the eyes of faith find Him more and more real.

IN DEED How much of your walk with God is based on your five senses? Do you invest your heart in Him only when He is demonstrating His favor? Or do you trust that His love is real even when you don’t see it? When the Bible says that God is a refuge, a help in trouble, a deliverer, a healer—and all the wonderful things it says about Him— that revelation is a greater reality than the paper and ink you hold in your hand or anything else your eyes can see and fingers can touch. There is a profound blessedness in believing that. God manifests His presence to those who believed Him before having seen Him. He readily intervenes on behalf of those who know He will. Believe, and be blessed.