Hey friends, how are you today? How is your today? It’s a beautiful, but chilly day in my neighborhood.  We woke to a mere 20°.  But present are bright, beautiful, blue skies.   That beaming, blazing, brilliant ball of light in the sky is the sun. Although we can’t yet feel its radiant heat, supposedly it’s coming.  I’m thankful the Lord gave me eyes to see.  Because it’s a beautiful day today.  

“Seeing is believing” I’m sure you’ve heard of that phrase.  Another is, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.  Or how about, ‘the eye needs no explanation’.  Sometimes I’m part of the crowd that needs to ‘see it to believe it’. 

What happens though when the Lord calls me to believe without the ‘seeing’?  When my reality disagrees with the promises of God? He says He will never leave me, but I can’t find Him today.  He says He will provide all my needs, but today I am without.   He says, I am His child, but I feel so unworthy.  The seen versus the unseen.

Quite a few years ago now, I thought the Lord had abandoned me.  I prayed and cried out to Him, but He was nowhere to be found.  My heart could not find Him.  Depression had my very soul in its grip.  Where are You, Lord? This was the continuous question and I had no answer.   Why does my soul believe the lies I tell myself? Why is so easy to believe only what I could ‘see’?

Do you know Sarah was 65 years old when God promised her a son? Despondency and desperation, I think, come in the waiting room of life.  Today at 65 years, the Lord says she will have a son.  Although, the reality says that’s a tad bit unlikely.  But today, the Lord spoke and so it will happen just as He said. 

But then she waits a year, then two, then five, then eight, now she is 75 years old.  Reality is beginning to creep through the door.  Certainly at 75, she can’t have a child.  So, she finds another way to fulfill God’s promise.  Except the Lord tells her, you will bear my promise, not another woman.  

Now she is eighty, then eighty-five.  Now it will take a complete miracle.  Absolutely no help from anyone.  Only God.  She is ninety when she has her son, Issac.  90 years old.  What to do, what to do, when reality and time seem to threaten the promises of God? 

The seen versus the unseen.  The Bible tells us, ‘we battle not against the ‘seen’ but rather the ‘unseen’.  But I can’t see the ‘unseen’.  What I do ‘see’ is that miserable, bitter person who is trying my last nerve.  

Faith, just a small five letter word.   Faith, I had to have it for my salvation.  My very first step on the journey of eternal life required me to believe in Someone, I cannot see.  And from that moment, almost all of what I am required to believe is steep in what I can’t see.  I don’t need eyes to believe.  I need my heart.  

I get stuck in my reality at times.  I can’t seem to move because what I ‘see’ tells me something different from the Word of God.  Seeing tells me peace is a figment of my imagination. War is my reality.  Seeing tells me love is conditional. It’s based on how much I give; how lovable I am to others.  But the Bible doesn’t agree.  

Faith demands I believe the Unseen and in the Unseen for the unseen.  The beauty of the God I serve is that He gives me ‘seeing’ evidence of His existence.   And also, in the fulfillment of His promises. 

During that depression period, although my heart failed to ‘see’ the Lord, there was only His footprints in the sand.  It was through the continuous time with Him and the fellowship of friends and family that my soul began to ‘see’.  It took time, because time will reveal the good or the ugly, in due time.  

The Lord wants us to develop a relationship with Him built on faith.  It must be built on faith.  On this journey to eternity, we will be required to be, to do, all without ‘seeing’.  We may be called to go when all we have is faith to complete the task.  Faith is a requirement for this journey.

I love the Lord.  He knows my faith is small. He provides me with evidence of His existence. He shows me in the impossibility of creation that He is real.  He displays the evidence of His great love in the freedom and joy of my salvation.  He exhibits His strength and power in the variation of the seasons of the earth. He manifests His grace and mercy by ensuring that in due time, He keeps every single one of His promises.  Through His Word, in the stories of people of old, He demonstrates His faithfulness.  

With all that, He says believe what you can’t see.  Trust when your reality disagrees with His promises.  Hold on when time seems to move at the speed of light.  Rely on the Lord, when the time for deliverance has seemingly passed.  You have not been abandoned. The Lord is the Promise Keeper.  

How do you handle the wait? Do you wait well? Share your waiting tips.