Believing is Seeing

   Just one week after He arose from the grave, Jesus invited Thomas to “Reach here your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand, and put it into My side, and be not unbelieving, but believing.” Until Thomas actually saw the risen Lord and the scars which evidenced that He was the same One who was crucified, he refused to believe – no matter what his friends and fellow disciples would say.  After Thomas proclaimed his faith in Jesus, recognizing Him as “my Lord and my God,” Jesus commended him. More importantly, though, He looked forward in time, commending those of us “who did not see, and yet believed.” 

   Thomas would have fit in well with today’s culture that says ‘seeing is believing.’  If only he had remembered Abraham, he would have realized that God calls us to a place in which the evidence that comes by seeing is of secondary value.

   Unlike today, Abraham’s perspective was that believing is seeing.  For Abraham, the reality of God’s promise came long before it was actually fulfilled.  While it’s certainly true that at one point he wrestled with the mechanics of how God wanted to fulfill His promise, he never doubted that the promise would be fulfilled.  Why?  Because he believed in the One who spoke it.  As a result,  he counted that promise as already completed – even though he had to wait 25 years for the fulfillment.

   It is there, on the One who both promises and fulfills His promises, that we are to hang our hats.  The believer's faith must always rest on God and His faithfulness.  We must not put our trust in what we can see.  We are to walk by faith, not by sight.  We must put our trust in the promises of God because we are convinced that with God, a promise made is a promise kept.  This realization should keep us from falling into the throes of doubt.  Doubt, after all, is nothing more than walking by sight – trusting in what can be seen in this world rather than in the Creator of this world.  

      Is there anything in your life which would encourage another person to believe without seeing?  Is your faith validated by the things you see, or by the character of God who has shown Himself to be a promise keeper?