What "By Faith" are you standing on?
Hebrews 11:1 says, "What is faith? It's the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. By faith, we understand that the entire universe was formed at Gods command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen." You could say that stretched across my walk with Christ that He has shown me various times where I have needed more faith to stand in the promises that He had for me. Christ has definitely grown my heart in faith by making me recognize that faith is complete trust in Him, without question!
Many people define faith differently, but my definition of faith comes directly from the source in the bible, in Hebrews, as stated above. As I was reading in Hebrews this morning I felt inclined to look back into where God had me leaning on faith and trusting in Him times before. As I continued on reading, these words "by faith" stuck out on the pages that I read. By faith...what does that mean? By what faith do we have that we trust in God and trust that He's got it, He's already taken care of it and that we need to hold onto the promise that He has for us in that.
This morning I was so encouraged by reading about the "by faith's" that are in the word. For example, the by faith of Sarah and Abraham. Abraham and Sarah were both very old. Sarah was also barren. Despite these two things, together Abraham and Sarah stood on the promise that God was going to give them a child, and He did. Abraham had held onto the promise that God had showed him, by faith. As I was reading this, I thought, "this is relevant to my life." After losing a baby back in 2014, just being honest I will say that, I lost a lot of my faith. Although I never blamed God I allowed the enemy to steal from me in my thoughts, my peace and my heart. I soon began to come back to realize what the enemy was doing and shut it off. That is when I opened my heart back up to allow God to start to restore my faith! God had never left my side, but I been allowing the enemy to veer me off from sitting in my father's lap. After waiting and trying to conceive another baby, my faith was lingering but with my husbands faith and God's promise, I was able to stand on the "by faith" that God had for us. We stood on the "by faith" that God had promised us another child. NOT a replacement child for the one we had lost, but yet another baby that we could call "ours!" A baby from God that we could raise up in relationship with Christ. Having stood on our "by faith", we will be welcoming yet another baby girl into our family in just a couple short weeks because of His promise to us and us standing on His word, by faith!
This leads me to another amazing "by faith". In Exodus 14:15 it says, "Then the Lord said to Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving! Use your shepherd's staff- hold it out over the water, and a path will open up before you through the sea. Then all the people of Israel will walk through on dry ground." God was wanting Moses to have faith that He, God would part the sea for them. The Lord wanted to rescue Israel from the Egyptians that day. Hebrews 11:29, "By faith, the people of Israel went right through the red sea as though they were on dry ground. But, when the egyptians followed, they drowned." Think about this. By Moses's faith, God opened up an entire path through the water that blew all night and turned the seabed into dry land. If Moses had not lead the people of Israel, "by faith", they may have not made it across.
What an AMAZING God we have that gives us a promise to hold onto something and then proves it. We, as Christ followers need to be listen to God and what He's telling us and, "by faith" stand on the promise. Today, allow the Lord to be your strength and your song because, HE IS YOUR VICTORY.
-Kirste