2 Cor 5.6-8 Therefore [we are] always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, [I say], and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
I have heard it said that walking by faith and not by sight means that we do not live the Christian life according to what our five senses tell us. Now I realize that an interpretation such as that has led to some very heretical doctrines. Yet, there is an element of truth to be found in that idea. An unbiased examination of Scripture demands that we believe in the unbelievable. Try unpacking the first verse of the Bible, In the beginning, God!
God’s Word is indeed God’s Word. Therefore, we might expect to find certain promises that bypass the grid of our natural understanding of things. The kingdom of God operates on an entirely different level than the kingdom of the here and now, doesn’t it? In God’s kingdom, you give to get. You die to live. You resist to advance. You mourn to find comfort. None of those things are true in the natural realm. Thus, we walk by faith. We live our lives looking past the here and now.
Paul wrote, While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal. And yet, it is by looking at the eternal, that we “make sense” out of the here and now. It is faith in God that enables us to press on in hope. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Our faith that we have is a gift from God that enables us to “see” what the natural eyes cannot see. Thus, we can look beyond the now with hope in a most certain future.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. The love that we have for Jesus is a powerful weapon against the fiery darts of disappointment and suffering planet earth. Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see [him] not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. May your day be filled with exuberant joy as you walk by faith, and not by your feelings, your circumstances, or the morning newspaper. God reigns!
