15 June 2010

Saturday evening, A and I had the opportunity to go to a leadership development event at our church. The speaker was Dr. Frank Harvey, our pastor's pastor, who also spoke at our regular church services Sunday morning. (What follows is a blend of what Dr. Harvey taught in all three messages and what I think about it. If you find any wrong thinking, it's mine!) He spoke about God's creative power in us. God is a creative God and since we bear His image, we are creative too. In His power, we can be a part of bringing into existence new things, things that haven't been seen or done before. But, in order to do that, we first must see the new thing. We have to see beyond what is to what can be, what will be, what God wants to bring into our reality. That's why God is a giver of visions, dreams--so that we can see what He wants to do.

A while back I blogged about the similarities between our journey of faith with the adoption and Abraham and Sarah's walking out their faith in God's promise to them. Pastor Frank brought up Abe and Sarah's story and how God gave Abe a vision of his descendants when He told him to look at the number of stars in the sky. It takes faith to believe that what God has shown you will become reality. In fact, Hebrews 11:13 says "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance." Before the promises were made reality, Abe and the others saw the truth and believed.

Hebrews 11:1 says, "What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see." Now, I've heard this verse many, many times before, but I got to thinking about that word "evidence." Evidence is the proof of something that happened. Evidence is the result of something. Evidence in the courtroom is something left behind that tells the story of what happened, or it can be the testimony of an eye-witness. So, "evidence" of something that hasn't happened yet is a bit of an oxymoron. I think I may have even heard a movie line once to the effect that you can't prove what hasn't yet occurred (bonus points if someone can tell me where I got that!). It's like the very fact that He told me He was going to exceed my expectations regarding this next adoption, and I believed Him, is the proof that it will happen. Faith is the proof that what is not yet reality will someday come to pass. Kinda trippy, huh?

Other translations of Hebrews 11:1 relate the first part of the verse as "Faith is the substance of things hoped for..." Substance. Substance is observable. Touchable. Holdable. It has weight and reality. In fact the Greek word can be translated as "basis, foundation" or even "existence." Faith is the foundation of our hope. It sounds almost cyclical--we hope something God promised will come to be because we have faith. Our faith supports our hope and makes it real. Faith is the part of the promise that exists in our present reality. It's not some namby-pamby hope like "I hope it doesn't rain today." Not a wish. Not something left to chance. But a reality.

In my situation, I KNOW that God will come through. I don't know how I know. I don't have to work up the knowing. I just KNOW. He said it; He'll do it. He showed me what He could do and I know He'll do even better than that! I've never really had faith like this before. Maybe that's why I never really considered the faith-evidence oxymoron before. Just something I'm thinking through.