It is easy to love God when he gives us what we want. It is effortless and even sensible to trust God with our lives when our prayers are answered like we think they should be. After all, we both agree on how things should be working out! But when things go terribly wrong (according to our understanding of “wrong”), we begin to wonder if God knows what he is doing. This is when we discover if we only love God because he gives us what we want and when he gives us what we want. What God requires, however, is that we love him—and therefore trust him—in those times when things go terribly wrong (according to our understanding of “wrong”). It’s called faith, and most people do not have much of it.
We think that answered prayer—that is, prayer answered in the way we want it to be answered—is evidence that God exists. Not so. If we only believe in God because he answered our prayer, then all we have is faith in a God who will give us what we want. And who wouldn’t have faith in a God like that? But what about a God who does not give us what we want? Do we have faith in that kind of God?—because that’s who our God is! Our God gives us what he wants—which is way better than what we want. Much of the time, however, we struggle with God’s ways. We say we have faith in God, so when things go terribly wrong (according to our definition of “wrong”), we have the chance to find out if we believe what we say we believe! St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” Think about that for a moment!
Paul reminds us that we must “walk by faith, not by sight.”1 This tells us two things: Number 1: The opposite of faith is sight. We presume the opposite of faith is doubting, but this is not so. Doubt is reservation and it needs faith, which is assurance. But often when we doubt, instead of leaning on faith, we demand evidence—which is seeing God’s hand working. However, once we see something, we no longer need to have faith. When we don’t see it, we need faith. So, sight is the opposite of faith. Jesus does not tell us we need to see in order to believe; he does not tell us we need to understand in order to believe; he simply tells us we need to believe. The more faith we have, the less doubt we have. As faith grows, doubt shrinks, and by the way, only we can grow our faith. God will not give us more faith; our faith grows when we exercise it.
Number 2: Seeing is not believing. The famous quote Seeing is believing! means that many people require evidence before they believe. They pray for signs so they can have faith. The scribes and the Pharisees approached Jesus, “saying, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.’”2 Jesus did not comply. Why? Because they had already seen Jesus perform miracle after miracle, and still, they did not believe. Evidence does not produce faith because it is specific, only addresses the current crisis, and will not suffice for the next crisis. Seeing is not believing. Faith can only be present when we cannot see. Faith is “the conviction of things not seen.”3
And so. If answered prayer is not evidence that God exists, what is it? It is God’s gift to us! James tells us that “every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”4 God loves us so much that he delights to give us good gifts! Sometimes they are direct answers to our prayer, but mostly these gifts are things we did not even pray for. Paul reminds us that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”5 His gifts are more than what we would have asked for had we asked! They are indeed “perfect”!
When we see that God is that good and that perfect, we will eventually (hopefully) have faith that God knows best even when things go terribly wrong (according to our understanding of “wrong”).
Let’s be thankful for that.
12 Corinthians 5:7 2Matthew 12:38 3Hebrews 11:1 4James 1:17 5Ephesians 3:17
Thanks for this real Thanksgiving message!