“Walk by faith, not by sight” is an old saying in church circles. I recently heard Pastor Steven Furtick put an interesting twist on this. He said, “If you walk by faith and not by sight, you’ll always hear something from God before you see any evidence of it.” Most of the time, the things we hear from God seem a little crazy.
The promptings of the Holy Spirit are often potentially dangerous, defy social norms, or push us way out of our comfort zone. We have to choose to either obey God (walk by faith) or ignore him and go our own way (walk by sight).
For disciples of Jesus, there is no real choice; we must obey. We must walk by faith and hope things come into focus at some point down the road. We need not be concerned about jumping without a net to catch us, because our Father will always be there to wrap us in His arms. It’s difficult because we can’t see Him waiting on the other side. We must take Him at His word and trust He is always with us (Hebrews 13:5). Remembering this makes it much easier to walk by faith.
Still, we would all like to see the “why” and the “what happens next” each time God prompts us to act. It’s easy to rationalize our fear of following Him by claiming we aren’t certain it was God who spoke to us in the first place. If we experience any trepidation at all carrying out His word, we brush it off as not really coming from God. I submit we should default to the opposite. Whenever you have the slightest inkling God has told you to do something, do it. Don’t ask questions and don’t analyze the task, just do it.
It is said to walk by faith is a difficult thing and take years to make progress on it. I think that’s a massive cop-out perpetuated by those who would rather not walk by faith at all. To walk by faith is easy if our default answer to the commands of Christ is “absolutely!” When we wait to see what God will do through the situation, we have already missed the way He wanted to bless us through it. When we hesitate, we are saying we don’t trust God. We don’t believe His character is impeccable and altogether trustworthy.
If you believe Jesus is who He said He was, if you believe God’s character consists of perfect truth and perfect love, you will obey without hesitation. You won’t wait until it’s safe or convenient. You won’t wait until you can see the situation a bit more clearly. That’s not belief; it’s not faith, and it is the exact opposite of Jesus being the Lord of your life. If Jesus is your Lord, you will simply act. You will humbly obey. You will choose to walk by faith.