Today I read Hebrews 11 and, wow, I’m really enjoying Hebrews. It covers a lot of fantastic points about being a believer.
If you haven’t read it, I recommend you give it a go. Read the whole thing or, if you want to follow along with me, there are only two chapters left after today. I’ll be reading Hebrews 12 tomorrow and 13 on Wednesday.
Hebrews 11 begins with this:
Hebrews 11:1-2
1Now Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.
I am certainly not a Bible scholar and this makes me a little wary of going into too much detail publicly about my thoughts on scripture. I hope that as you read all my entries you will keep in mind that I am just one girl writing about what I think God is saying to me.
Think about what he might be saying to you. And by reading the scriptures on your own, you will begin to hear him more and more… while you read and while you do other things. And as you read more and more scriptures, you will be better able to discern if what you are hearing comes from you or from him. I’m not saying it will always be easy, but spending more time in the Word certainly does make it a lot easier.
But back to Hebrews 11.
Faith is an amazing thing. Fully trust in something you cannot see? Does that I mean I have to trust in things I do not fully understand? Yes, I think so. But I think he wants us to understand. I think as we grow in our faith, things fall together better and make more sense.
For me, I wanted to rationalize every little detail of Christianity before I could fully believe. And when I was going through my spiritual rediscovery several years ago, it was the fact that no one through the years has been able to present a physical body of Jesus Christ that made me have to believe that He was resurrected and then, in fact, was who He said he was. (So then if He is who He said He was, then all He said has to be true and so forth and so on.)
So I had something concrete to base my faith on, but I was still puzzled. And as I read through the Bible in 90 days (quite an incredible exhausting, invigorating whirlwind) filled with more questions, my questions began to fall away. I could hear Him talking to me. He showed me scripture I had read but not understood. And he made me stop worrying about the questions so much and just let go, have faith and believe. And the importance of every little detail fell away. (Yet I now see the importance of all those details in a new way.)
Please don’t misunderstand, as Hebrews 11 points out, no, just having faith doesn’t mean you get all your wishes, or even promises, fulfilled here on earth. Many Bible stories share people who did amazing things in faith, yet many bad things happened to them. But the story is not over. Here’s what verse 40 says:
Hebrews 11:40
God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
So even after reading about all these spectacular acts of faith, (Hebrews 11 lists many, almost like a Greatest Hits collection) you still have to have faith that it all turned out/ turns out well for those who go to Christ and want to be His.
And it does, because that is His plan. And it is a perfect plan, even if I don’t understand it. Part of the beauty is that I don’t have to, but He wants me to dig deep and understand as much as I’d like.
Thank you Lord, for that.
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