Believing is Seeing and Experiencing

UV 2145/10000 Believing is Seeing and Experiencing
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11 v 1

Man does not live by bread alone, by empiricial evidence but by experiential faith. We cannot ask for evidence in order to believe the truths revealed in scripture about the Unseen God, the unseen realms, the unseen beings. It is remarkable that this uni-verse states that faith is itself the evidence. We believe in God, therefore He exists. We believe, therefor we see. It turns on its head the universal human premise, “ Seeing is believing.” It implies that believing enables us to see and not the other way around. Faith enables us to hope and then to wait patiently for the hope to be fulfilled.

Faith is the substance or the invisible material with which our hope is built, realised, fulfilled, experienced. Faith enables us to deploy in full in our three-dimensional life and world, the five D’s – devotion to God, dedication to the service of man, discipline to control oneself, the determination to achieve or realize one’s hoped for goals, targets, aims, objectives, the diligence to do all that needs to be done by us while trusting God for the unseen and unknown rest. Our experiences of the love, grace, justice, righteousness and power of God is the evidence to verify the veracity and authenticity of our faith. We need to live on earth with an eternal or heavenly or godly perspective and priorities. It is an acknowledgement that the spiritual realm transcends and supercedes the physical and seen world. The real world is not the physical world but the spiritual world, the kingdom of God that lies within us and amongst us. The physical world is only a shadow of the spiritual world. The shadow of God is more real than the most solid three dimensional object. Hence, when we believe that the shadow of God is upon us, all other shadows of fear, of sin, of death, of curses and limitations melt away. Faith is therefore not an airy-fairy something on the sidelines of real life but the substantial aspect of life.

Faith is the sixth sense. It does not abandon the other five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell but it combines the effect of all these five sense with common sense and works on the principle that all that exists cannot be seen for instance, air or electronic waves, radio waves and so on. Faith enables us to see beyond what our eyes cn see, to hear beyond what our ears can hear, to touch beyond what our hands can touch, to smell beyond what our nose can smell, to taste beyond what our tongue can taste. It is like visible spectrum of light and the invisible ultra violet light, or like the audible sound and ultra sound. When we believe, we experience that which is promised by the Lord- His grace, His love, salvation, eternal life. We can touch Him and be touched by Him in our hearts and spirits. It may or may not have physical correspondence. We can hear His voice through the Word, through true prophecy, through other men and women of God anointed by Him. We can taste His mercy, His love, the fruit of the Spirit in us. We can smell and spread the sweet fragrance of the presence of Jesus in our lives.

Prateep V Philip