~ "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
Hebrews 11:1
If you've been in church at all in your life you've probably heard this verse preached or at least mentioned. "For we walk by faith, not by sight." 2 Corinthians 5:7. We all agree yes, let's live by faith and not sight! And it's all fun and games until you actually start living by faith and not sight. When God starts asking you to do things that He has to show up or you're screwed. When you start looking pretty foolish to the world and you yourself start wondering, 'Is this actually what I'm supposed to be doing?' That's when faith before sight starts to get uncomfortable.
If you are a Christian, faith is the foundation for everything you believe. You put your hope and trust in a God you can not physically see. I've spent a lot of my life with this as the only kind of faith I knew anything about. I had a relationship with Jesus, my life was comfortable and I was great with all of it. God loved me too much to leave me in that place, though. God started busting into that about ten years ago and each year since He keeps showing me what it means to LIVE by faith.
"A thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance."
John 10:10
Recently the Lord led me to Hebrews 11 one day through something else I was reading and I ended up spending about an hour reading through it and meditating on the truths in there. You tend to see scripture in a different light when you're walking through something similar as the characters of the Bible were.
"BY FAITH we..."
"BY FAITH Abel...
"BY FAITH Enoch...
"BY FAITH Noah..."
"BY FAITH Abraham..."
"BY FAITH Sarah..."
"BY FAITH Isaac..."
"BY FAITH Jacob..."
"BY FAITH Joseph..."
"BY FAITH Moses..."
"BY FAITH he left Egypt..."
BY FAITH he instituted the Passover..."
"BY FAITH they crossed the Red Sea..."
"BY FAITH the walls of Jericho fell down..."
"BY FAITH Rahab..."
At some point, all of the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 had to make a choice. They had to make a decision if they were going to say 'yes' to God. They had to decide if they were going to make the first step forward in obeying whatever it is God was asking them to do. All of these people mentioned in this chapter had an action step of faith before they ever saw God tangibly do anything.
For some, that meant God was actually asking them to do nothing....wait. For others, it meant moving to a far off land where they didn't even know where they were going. And for others, they were asked to lead an entire group of God's people out of captivity.
For some, that meant God was actually asking them to do nothing....wait. For others, it meant moving to a far off land where they didn't even know where they were going. And for others, they were asked to lead an entire group of God's people out of captivity.
Somewhere in their story, before entering into the Hebrews hall of fame for outstanding faith, they had a middle. We don't know all the details about the middle of their stories, except we know they had them. And that's where we're at in our adoption. The middle. We've laid our yes on the table. We have trusted in faith that this is what God is calling us to do. As the Bethel song says, "I'm standing knee deep but I'm out where I've never been." We have stepped off the shores, by faith, and now we're standing in deep waters, persevering through the waves and waiting to get to the side of sight.
The middle is tough ground. The middle will make you question God in ways you have never questioned before. The middle is where your faith becomes firm. I know when our adoption journey ends and a new beginning starts, I will have countless lessons that I pray I can pass on to those who come after us. But I also wanted to just shed a little light into the middle. Don't fight it! Allow God to do a work in you while you wait so that when you're delivered from the middle you are not the same person as when your journey began.
I am actually learning to love this place. Don't get me wrong, I am not interested in staying here forever and thankfully God isn't either. But there is no other way, no other spot that I can grow in my intimacy with Jesus than in the middle. I know how we got here, and by faith we trust that our story ends with our boys coming home, but we have no clue what happens in the middle. And for that, I need Jesus desperately. If I only lived out my faith by what I could see with my eyes and what I knew to be certain then I would be missing out greatly. And in God's economy, faith is as good as sight. (Rom 8:24)
"Very often we celebrate what we come out of. I think the question we should ask is what did I leave with? Did you leave with wisdom? Did you leave with strength that you didn't have before? Did you leave with perspective that you didn't have before? Because It's only when you leave with something you can look back on it and say like David said, it was good that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. Some of our greatest lessons come in some of our most challenging seasons."
Dharius Daniels
In faith we said yes to this adoption. In faith we have shared our story with people close to us and people we don't even know. In faith we have given thousands of dollars to an adoption agency to make these children part of our family. In faith we have shared with our kids that they'll have three brothers. In faith we have opened our hearts to these boys. In faith we have allowed them into our home with pictures and constant conversation about what we think they might be doing or how we think they'll like a certain food when they're home. In faith we write letters to them and sign them "Mom and Dad". In faith they draw us pictures with Wykle on the top of their papers. In faith we plan for their futures. In faith we try to grasp even spitting out the words that we'll be a family of NINE. In faith we WAIT. In faith we know in God's perfect timing this story has a beautiful ending.
It is a joy and a delight to walk by faith. It is also hard and inconvenient.
"Now in this hope we were saved, yet hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience." Romans 8:24-25
The crazy part about all of this is we could have said no. God doesn't force us to obey but He delights in our obedience and participation in the work of the Kingdom. What if all those people listed in Hebrews 11 would have said 'Thanks, God, but I'm good!" What if Moses would have said, "You know, God, I am just going to choose not to participate in You parting the sea today."? It sounds crazy because we know how those stories end and how God uses those people in the Bible to do some amazing things. He is asking us to participate in the same ways! The truth that God even wants that is humbling. I do not believe God calls everyone to adopt. But I know if you are a Christ follower, He is asking you to live your life by faith and trust Him. Adoption is an amazing thing but it does not define who our family is. Adoption is the byproduct of us learning to lay down our lives and do things God's way and not our own. It's just a taste of the 'abundance of life' God has for us when we do things His way.
I was listening to a sermon this week and part of it was talking about Moses and the Israelites in Exodus. He says that what God tells Moses will happen in Chapter 3 of Exodus does not happen until Chapter 12 of Exodus. God tells Moses he will deliver them from Egypt. Eight chapters go by before God delivers His people. This is what the pastor said: "Could they endure chapters 4 through 11? The test of faith is in the enormity of the obstacle and the length of the wait. It's not just how big can I believe but can I keep on believing when it feels like believing isn't working?" Chapters 4 through 11 in Exodus was their middle in the story of God delivering them out of Egypt. They endured and God delivered them, just as He promised.
"In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls."
1 Peter 1:6-9
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