Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith

by Jon Bloom

we must learn to trust God’s promises more than we trust our perceptions.

“Where is your faith?” Where? My faith is in what I see. My faith is in what I feel. When the storm hit, I trusted what my eyes saw. I trusted what my skin felt. I trusted the violent force that was tossing the boat like a toy. I trusted the stories told by my father. I trusted the tragedies I remember. I trusted the power of the storm because storms kill people. Is that wrong? Up until a few minutes before, this would have merely seemed like common sense. But Jesus had changed everything.

What Jesus did for James and the other disciples when he quieted the storm was a fear-transfer. One moment they feared the storm and the next moment they feared Jesus, with a holy, reverent fear. This storm was a gift from God to them because it taught them just how powerful Jesus was and deepened their faith in him. And it prepared them to weather other, even more deadly kinds of storms that lay ahead of them.

When the storms of life hit, they almost always appear stronger to us than God’s Word. It is crucial for us to remember that our perceptions can be deceptive. When circumstances strike fear into our hearts, the question we must ask ourselves is, where is your faith?

What God wants is for you to trust what he says o...

“The emotion of disappointment is never neutral, Primus. It is not vague and detached. It has roots directly connected to something we believe. Jesus wants you follow the roots. If you find that sin is feeding your emotion of disappointment, then your event of disappointment is a kindness meant to lead you to repentance.

There will come a time when Jesus’s prayer for us to be with him will overrule our prayer for prolonged earthly life. And when it does, we will experience a life so far better, richer, fuller, purer, and more joyful that we will shake our heads in wonder that we ever pleaded to stay.

God will not spare us from all awkward and painful decisions. Neither will he spare us from all wrong decisions resulting from our fallen finiteness, even if they are made in the integrity of our hearts. God has his purposes in all of these. But what we can trust him to do is faithfully give us the correction and guidance we need at the time he deems right.

In your place of desperation it may be that what you need most is not less turmoil, but more trust. For God chooses stables of desperation as the birthplaces of his overwhelming grace.

we will love God to the degree that we recognize the magnitude of our sins and the immensity of God’s grace to forgive them.