By 
Everyone lives by faith. Even the atheist. It is an inescapable reality of life on planet earth.
We must all live by faith because none of us knows everything. If we knew everything, as the Bible declares God to be, faith would be completely unnecessary. Faith refers to things that we believe but do not absolutely know to be true. Faith is intrinsically woven into the fabric of our daily lives. In May 2000, my wife, daughter, and I boarded a Boeing 777 and flew for more than 12 hours twice (to and from Japan) in the belief that the plane would reach our respective destinations safely. In business, we enter into contracts with long-term financial commitments in the belief that we will be able to pay or get paid, depending on which side of the deal we are on. We buy advance tickets to concerts, plays and sporting events in the belief that we will be fine and that otherwise we will be able to attend.
Faith is no longer a problem once I enter the terminal at the destination airport; then i know. I don’t need faith when the contract is completed; then I know that I have given or received what was expected. Faith is no longer a problem once the concert or game is over; then I know whether or not I got my money’s worth.
We can be so sure of questions of faith, have accumulated such subjectively strong supporting evidence, that we would say we “know” such and such. I make. For example, you could hear me say “I know there is a God.” However, when I make such a claim, I do not mean that this reality has such objectivity that it is indisputable, that no one can question my “knowledge”. No, as strong as it is, it is my belief. And honestly, I must say that the strength of my belief rises and falls and sometimes seems to disappear as a result of deep disappointment.
Such mood swings affected the great Christian writer CS Lewis. Listen to him: “Now that I am a Christian, I have moods in which everything seems very unlikely; but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity seemed terribly likely.” He goes on to say, “That is why faith is such a necessary virtue: Unless you can teach your moods ‘where they are triggered’, you can never be a healthy Christian or even a healthy atheist.” (Mother Christianity)
Remember now: the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim, and even the atheist are in the same boat of “faith” as you and me. Sure, your faith is different, but it’s faith nonetheless. The style and destiny of our ships are different, but they are nonetheless ships of faith. The Hindu cannot prove reincarnation any more than I can prove resurrection. An atheist cannot prove there is no God any more than I can prove the existence of God. Each of us has our beliefs, and only when the ultimate consequences of our respective beliefs are ours will we really know. A split second after my death I will know if the dead know something or not. Also, I will know how accurate my beliefs were about life after death, good and evil, heaven and hell.
Let me briefly share what I know. I know that (in my sixties, having spent most of my life) the time that I will have lived on earth is not long enough to satisfy something within me. The Bible says that God “has put eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Inside me there is a recognizable desire to live forever. However, this desire is qualified; I want to live forever in a perfect place. I really don’t want to live here forever!
Another thing I know is this: something is wrong with me; I must admit that I have moral flaws. Forget your standards, the standards of society, the standards of my parents, the standards of the church, and even the biblical standards; I violate the standards within me, standards that are part of my heart. I know I should be better than I am. I also know that common human games have not helped me: games like denying or minimizing this condition of my heart or the popular game of comparing myself to people who obviously seem to be much worse than me (Thank goodness for Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others like them; putting them aside, most of us seem good enough to be downright acceptable!).
I believe that the Bible is the Creator’s revelation of His person and His will for humanity. What I do know is that within its pages I have found a constitution for living my life that resonates with much that resides deep within my heart. Like most of you, I have been hurt by religious people, even true Christians. I have even been unjustly hurt by spiritual leaders entrusted to care for this little sheep. Like many others, I have also been perplexed and confused by the various doctrines within the sects of Christianity. What I do know is that my roughly 40 years of walking with the God of the Bible and the people who embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior have blessed my life in countless ways. Aside from my Christian faith, not only would I not have any of my closest friends, but I would also not have my best friend: my wife. Also, without my best friend, I would not have three of my four children and five of my seven grandchildren. These things I know!
I’m surely quite ignorant. They fill the libraries with things I don’t know about. We are all forced to live with our ignorance, in the sense that regardless of how much we know, there is always much more that we do not know. (There is no “know-it-all”; the term only refers to those obnoxious people who act as if they know everything.) Much of what I do not know, of course, others do. However, something I don’t know, no human really knows. So I am forced to live by my beliefs. Since we only know the absolute validity of our beliefs after they have been tested, and since testing of our beliefs can have profound consequences, with proper seriousness, I am constantly refining my belief system for accuracy. And I trust Jesus as Lord, even from my ignorance.
The scientist man says “seeing is believing”; not just the Bible but our own experience teaches us that we will never see some things unless we believe in them first. Electric light, for example, would never have been created unless Edison had firmly believed that it could be manufactured. I not only advocate but practice walking by faith, not by sight. To be perfectly honest, I prefer to walk by sight; But I have come to see that walking by faith is not wrong. In fact, you and I do it every day. It is as natural as breathing.
Walking by faith versus sight does not mean that we are irrational, that there is no reasonableness in what we believe. Matters of faith are suprarational. The Bible provides many truths that cannot be known naturally, but are necessary for our life’s journey. Prophetic revelation offers us the necessary “stepping stones” to leave the firm shore of our genuine knowledge and successfully venture into the unknown without drowning in a sea of damnable ignorance. In addition to informing us about things that we naturally could not know, biblical revelation warns us (at no cost) of many things that we can learn and often learn from experience, but only at great cost. Faith, then, is that kind of belief that leads me to step on those “steps”, which are only seen with the eyes of the heart, they are only tested after having put all my weight on them. Those “steps”, though invisible to the natural eye, are substantive, not imaginative.
Scripture says, “Now faith is the certainty of what is hoped for, the conviction of what is not seen” (Heb 11: 1 NKJV). The Greek word translated “substance” is a compound of two other Greek words meaning “a low environment (support) [Strongs Exhaustive Concordance]. Bible-based faith is God’s provision of something substantial to stand on and a path to walk on. By faith, we must choose to stand firm in that revelation and walk in it.
If you haven’t already, I hope you embrace this life of faith and become more comfortable with it as “God’s Way” for all of humanity. By hugging, I certainly mean more than just enduring the life of faith. And let’s not be intimidated by the fact that we cannot absolutely test the principles of our faith to those who would rather walk by their doubts than walk by our faith. I think it’s worth stating that most of us are a curious mix of faith and doubt. Having faith is not being exempt from doubts; rather, it is choosing faith over doubt. Remember the father of the child who was tormented by an evil spirit (recorded in Mark chapter 9). The beloved asked Jesus to help him “if he could.” Jesus said: “Everything is possible for the one who believes.” Speaking honestly with Jesus, the man said, “I believe, help me overcome my unbelief!” There you see that mixture of belief and disbelief that I can at least relate to. We also see a man choosing his faith over his doubt. This is, in part, what Scripture means when it refers to “the battle of faith.” (1 Timothy 6:12)
Finally, I encourage my fellow followers of Christ to participate in the spiritual, intellectual, and social disciplines necessary to continually refine their belief system. Please heed the apostle Paul’s godly counsel to all who wish to serve God diligently with their lives: “Do your best to present yourself to God as someone approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of God. truth”. (2 Timothy 2:15 NIV). The exercise of such a study was not intended to operate in isolation, dear friend; it was intended to be done while vitally connected in relationships with others in the Body of Christ. Therefore, the biblical admonition to “do not leave the gathering of yourselves” means much more than “do not perish the church” (Hebrews 10:25). The text refers to a variety of social disciplines (developmental activities that involve relational interaction with other believers, such as Bible studies and spiritual discussions) that are offered in the Body of Christ to help us grow in faith and knowledge. I encourage you to accept them fully.