Earlier this
afternoon I read the following description of faith: “[Faith is] the
appropriation of unseen yet present realities that shape one’s life in this
world and become more fully realized in the next.” It called back to mind a
vivid experience I had in
I had woken from
a dream-disturbed sleep that morning and found myself haunted by its disturbing
images. At first I tried to rid myself of them by thinking about the book I had
been reading earlier in the night. When that didn’t help, I turned my mind to
the Lord Jesus Christ. Instantly things changed. A deep sense of communion with
a real, living Person replaced the chaos of my dreams. Joy and peace flooded my
heart, chasing away the confusion and turmoil that had previously disturbed
it.
And with that
peace and joy, came the awareness that I was being taught a vital spiritual
lesson. It was the lesson that the Christian life is truly a life of faith. Let
me tease that out a little bit more and share with you the ideas that came to
mind as I meditated on this event and talked about it with Nola on our journey
back to
The first thing
impressed on me by this experience was how real Jesus – and the heavenly
spiritual realm to which he belongs – really is. We can’t see him, or the
throne of God, or the angels, or the “spirits of righteous men made perfect”(Hebrews 12:23), but they are all very real. We know about
them not simply because we can experience something of them, but because God
has told us about them in his Word.
Second, I was
impressed by the need to embrace and appropriate that world by faith. While I
couldn’t see Jesus with my eyes, and certainly didn’t see him in a Spirit-given
vision, I could nevertheless see him with the eye of faith. Furthermore, I was
able to respond to him by lifting my heart in prayer and praise. Indeed that
act of worship was as real an act of communication as talking to my wife.
That’s what faith does - it embraces as real the unseen and enables us to
engage with it intelligently and whole-heartedly.
Then thirdly, I
was deeply aware that this act of turning to Christ had been a deliberate act
on my part. I had consciously turned my mind toward the Lord Jesus, the Jesus
whom I have come to know through the Bible and through experience over many
years. Someone else didn’t do that for me; it was a controlled act of
thought-direction on my part.
That said, I
don’t mean to imply that I was the only one
involved in that action. What, after all, made me turn my mind toward the Lord
Jesus at that particular moment? I didn’t do so after a process of rational
thinking, but as a spontaneous response to an inner impulse. And where did that
come from? I don’t know for sure, but I believe that’s the kind of thing that
the Holy Spirit does as he lives in the hearts of those who belong to Christ.
The point I want
to make and leave with you is this: that in the midst of the concrete
experiences of living in this world (our work, our family life, our nights of
broken sleep), we are to look not just at the things that are seen, but,
through faith, at the things that are unseen (Hebrews 11:1, 27). That’s the
glory and uniqueness of the Christian life. It’s a life of faith.