Living By Faith

Again and again in my faith journey, I return to the eleventh chapter
of Hebrews, that great chapter of faith and of people who exercised
faith. I marvel at their ability to believe against belief, to act on
that belief in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and
ultimately to entrust their desires and their entire beings to God
even though they themselves would never see the fulfillment of His
promises. I desire to be a Christian in this kind of mold, the mold
of the heroes of faith in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.

As I digest these truths and stumble along in my attempt to live them,
I am realizing that such a life of faith has two components. The
first is this sense of future orientation. That is, the person of
faith, having heard the promise of God, is able to envision the
fulfillment of that promise in the future, and she responds to God in
the present. She believes that future reality to be in the bank, and
celebrates and worships God accordingly.

But there is also a present orientation to this kind of faith. For a
solely future orientation, at its extreme, would lead the Christian to
check out of the present, to live in a detached, unengaging way
towards present matters. But the person of faith understands that the
belief in God's future reality births not only worship to God for what
He is going to do, but obedience to God in the midst of what He is
doing right now. The person of faith, when faced with a terrible
struggle, does not simply believe God for resolution, worship Him for
what He will eventually do, and then numb herself from those present
difficulties. No, she faces them with hope that God will eventually
rescue, and with hope that God will be with her until then.

Most of us are better at one thing or the other. Some of us are
future-oriented: our faith becomes a matter of hearing God's promises
and believing them, seeing past present ills to future glories.
Others are present-oriented: our faith becomes a matter of
experiencing God in the here and now, and trusting Him minute by
minute. One without the other is an incomplete faith: the
future-oriented believer is prone to be so in touch with what's to
come that she's out of touch with what's going on right now, while the
present-oriented believer is prone to get so mired in what's now that
she loses sight of what's to come. Would that we round ourselves out
in this area, and would that we be part of faith communities that help
us practice both aspects of living by faith.