For We Walk Not By Sight, But By Faith

From Job 23, "I go east, but he is not there.  I go west, but I cannot find him.  I do not see him in the north, for he is hidden.  I look to the south, but he is concealed." Let's compare this to John 3:

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again,[a] you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”

How often we long for God to somehow inject himself into our physical existence in a way that makes him tangible, measurable, testable, and provable.  Wouldn't that be nice?  To the extremists that somehow cannot accept that anything outside of our perception can exist or that such outside force could both create and continue to guide our universe, it would be an eye-opener for them.  However, looking back to Moses' experiences in Egypt, even a true miracle can be copied or faked.

In requiring us to make an act of trust to accept and rely upon his message, God forever put true conversion and belief on a different plane than the counterfeits.  True, if we are not careful to continually pursue his truth, we can be led into all sorts of errors.  When you read about the religious violence being perpetrated in our world today, it makes it clear that believing something false puts us and all those around us at risk.  But when you really know the truth, when you rely upon God's Word and live by it faithfully, it becomes "an anchor of our souls".

The most amazing thing, I think, is that Jesus is telling us that just as we can never pinpoint where a gust of wind started or where it will end, merely notice it as it goes past (or if it is big enough, notice the pattern on our weather charts), so our physical world and natural mental faculties cannot perceive spiritual things, even down to understanding how or why a believer does a certain thing.  We can search the globe, as Job said, but never pin God down.

Isn't it harder to believe in things that you cannot see, touch, or feel?  Yes, of course it is!  In the same way that it is hard to believe in the moons of Saturn without a telescope (or satellite image).  That image that you see is the "assurance about things we cannot see", and serves the same purpose as our faith in God through Jesus Christ serves.  That is, it serves as the extension into our present reality of things we believe to be true but cannot directly see for ourselves.  And therefore, it is meant to be difficult, so that we would have to learn dependency upon God.

I saw where someone had said, Christians, prove to me that God exists.  And I am sorry, but it is not that simple.  Believing in God is a choice you make, just as not believing in God is a choice.  If I were able to prove it to you in a way that could not be disputed, that would take away your choice of believing or not believing.  For me, I look at the awesome complexity of creation, and note that everything has not collapsed.  That is evidence enough, for I know that I could not hope to uphold anything remotely similar for very long.

I do not know how effectively I have communicated my point.  I only hope that those who read this can accept it and put it into practice for themselves.  See for yourself that you cannot go on what you know, or what your natural senses bring to you.  You have to trust God and obey him.