Walking by Sight

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Heb 11:6
    
Consider:
  
Hebrews 11 is a wonderful chapter all about faith, but this verse can be rather disconcerting if you are trusting in your own strength, making our own provisions, being superstitious, or trusting in your own ability to keep the rules  (as covered in the last four meditations).   The trouble is that it’s like someone once said, faith is spelt R-I-S-K and a risky lifestyle can be uncomfortable, because we like to be in control of our lives, in control of what is happening.
  
We can do the religious thing, going to church once or twice a week.  We can try to be nice.   We can try to pray once (or five times) a day.  We can read and even memorise Scriptures.  All these things we can do quite easily – quite easily without God!   And that’s where it falls apart, because the one thing God wants for us is a relationship with Him, because the moment that happens He’s able to express His love toward us and bring change and blessing.  
     
A relationship means interaction. If you have a ‘relationship’ with another person you communicate with them, do things with them, and enjoy them.  Because He is love (1 Jn 4:8,16), everything about God wants to express goodness in our direction.  That’s what He wants to do because that is natural to Him, and when He’s able to do that, He is pleased and our lives get transformed.    And why should that all be?   Because of the Cross of Christ at Calvary.  That opened the door to a possible relationship with the living God.   Isn’t that incredible!
    
But let’s get back to our verse for today.  The old sin-thing in us struggles with the concept of not being able to see – we like being able to see, it helps our feeling of being in control!  All the Bible’s various descriptions of sin – e.g. lawlessness, rebellion etc. – these are all expressions of us being in control and doing our own thing. In our insecurity we feel we have to hold the reins of our lives.
   
Yet the writer to the Hebrews says we must have faith if we are to please God.  Why is that?  Because He is unseen and if you come to Him desiring a relationship with Him (as He wants and as we considered above), then you have to believe there is someone there you are talking to when you pray.  But even more than that, you need to believe that He responds to us when we seek Him, and that response is twofold: He speaks to us and He does things.  He forgives us, cleanses us, puts His Spirit in us, makes us His children, provides for us, guides us, protects us – and all these things are invisible, so it takes faith to believe they have happened or are happening. 
    
Faith needs a focus, and that is one of the things that we need and which is satisfied in the Cross of Jesus Christ.  We have to believe that God is there, and we have to believe that Jesus is God’s Son who came and lived and died and rose from the dead – all for us. The Cross is the pivotal point of Jesus’ activity which challenges our faith. It actually says he was in control and is in control and has done all we need to open the door for us to enjoy God. To believe that is an act of faith.   If you can’t believe it, you don’t have faith and you won’t enjoy the outworking of the Cross that brings God’s salvation to your life.
   
(NB. Afer the prayer, check the ‘Recap’ below to review where we have been so far in these meditations)
   
Prayer: 
   
Lord, you call me to a life of faith, yet if I am honest I prefer to be in control, I prefer to see. I realise that is the sin element still working and I purpose, with your help, to be a believer, focusing on the Cross, focusing on the resurrection, receiving all your goodness and love today because of those incredible events.
  
A RECAP
   
Before we go any further, it is perhaps wise that we recap where we have been and note the things we have considered:

   
We should realise that:

- Moral failure leaves us unclean and in need of cleansing and forgiveness
- Our heart is deceitful and cannot be trusted.
- Outside of Jesus, we can do nothing of any real virtue.
- We are inherently sinners, who need God’s transformation.
- We are tainted with sin though and through and it is ready to rise up in us unless we get God’s help
- Left to ourselves we are prone to fall to temptation.
- We will often turn to our own resources and reject the Lord’s provision.
- We will so often turn to superstition to create hope for ourselves.
- So often we try to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight by ‘keeping the rules’
- We’re called to a life of faith, but prefer a life of sight where we are in control.
   
We should realise these things but so often we don’t. Perhaps we’ve never thought about them, or perhaps we simply forget them.
    
Why have we been saying these things? Because until we see them, understand them and accept them, we will not see the need for Easter, we will not understand why Jesus went to the Cross, we won’t see our plight, either in eternity or on a daily basis, and we won’t be thankful.
   
Why did Jesus go to the Cross?

• because of my sin and your sin,
• because of that self-centred, godless inner nature that deserves condemnation
• because without his work we are helpless and hopeless, prone to getting it wrong, prone to creating a self-centred, self-seeking religion as a substitute for a relationship with the living God.

    

 THIS is why Jesus went to the Cross!