God is really speaking to me through Hebrews 11 right now. I want to share some things and encourage your faith. I have written on this subject before, but i just can’t stay away! It is so important that our belief in the unseen stays alive, vigorous and more real than the things that are passing away.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” Hebrews 11:1

I love definitions, and here we have a beautiful one.

Faith is assurance. This is also translated: faith is the substance. I like that term “substance”; it suggests tangibility. You can hold it in your hands, feel its weight and warmth. If we have substance, then we certainly have assurance: we are sure that it is real.

Assurance of what? Things hoped for. Hope is another concept i am obsessed with. Hope is not the wishful thinking we make it out to be in our culture. Hope is a confident expectation. When you are confident about something, you expect it. Faith assures us that we can confidently expect the fulness of our promise.

Faith is conviction. This is also translated: faith is the evidence. In a court of law, evidence is required in order to convict someone. In the court of life, faith is the evidence required to convict us of the certainty of our promises.

The accuser and this world’s host of false witnesses bring all kinds of “evidence” against the truth of God’s promises. Daily, we are fed endless streams of reason not to believe for the unseen. Even in God’s family: many have not learned to walk by faith, so they promote a life by sight. Many have had their hope deferred, their heart made sick, and so they council others against hope. This is not a criticism: it is one man’s honest assessment and call to compassion and prayer. Most of all, this world and the people of God who walk within it need to witness lives led by faith.

I believe that you are sure about something. God has put something in your heart. You have touched it, and become convinced of the realness of it’s substance. You have been confident that it’s fulness would come and so you have expected it’s fulness to come.

The world and the one’s who are of it have hurled at you every accusation, every mockery, every argument against your faith. Perhaps your belief has suffered abuse. Perhaps it is bruised, wounded, weak, even near death. But, it is still alive. Somewhere inside you still believe. Yes, in Jesus. Yes, in the scriptures. But, also in the specific thing that God spoke into your heart. The dream yet lives.

The mere presence of that faith within you, as small and weak as it may be, is the evidence that it shall come to pass. So, i say to you and to myself: keep believing for the unseen. It is more real than the seen. By your faith you will obtain your promises.