Believing Is Seeing

“He staggered not through unbelief.” Rom. iv. 20. THE divine promise had been given. There could be no doubt about that. But there were no external helps to make the soul certain of its fulfilment. The promise had no friends in the outer circumstances. The face of everything frowned upon it. Common experience was against it. Common sense was against it. And yet Abraham “staggered not’?! He steadied himself on the promise. His soul nested in the divine purpose. He dwelt in the secret place of the Most High. By faith he companioned with friendly realities when every hard and glaring event appeared to be his foe. For faith is a finer sense even than common sense. Common sense, when it is despoiled of faith, is a very local and deceitful sight. But seeing is believing! Nothing of the kind. Believing is the only true seeing! ‘“‘ Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see...?” ‘‘ He endured as seeing Him who is invisible.”

And we, too, have to trudge over roads where circumstances just shriek against our ereeds. We have heard the divine word, but the ‘‘ not likely” stares upon us on every side. And common sense is very aggressive, and it rears itself against the promise of our God. And the gathered wisdom of the world obtrudes itself against the hidden wisdom of the Lord. Our material setting is unfriendly. Carnal forces are ironical in their easy triumph. And we begin to look foolish in our simple faith. And, God help us! sometimes we begin to feel foolish, and we are tempted to make obeisance to the kingdom of the apparent, and to bow down and worship it.

Never was there greater need of deepliving men and women who will confront the proud and massed “unlikelies’’ with the spoken promise of our God. Never was the need more urgent that we should confirm ourselves in the promise amid the uncomfortable irony of circumstances, and the loud and blatant taunt of our foes. We must wear the word of the Lord like an athlete’s belt! “Having your loins girt about with truth!” These are the men and women who remain victors on the field at the end of the long and bloody day. At the beginning of day theirs is the faith which gives substance to things hoped for; at the end of the day the things hoped for have become their eternal possession.