Head-to-Feet Faith

Posted on Aug 19, 2021 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Men's Christian Living
Posted by : Tony Evans

I want to give you a simple definition of faith:

Faith is acting like God is telling the truth. It’s basing your actions on the belief that what He says is true.

Faith isn’t merely feeling like God is telling the truth. Nor is it saying God is telling the truth. For faith to truly be faith, it involves acting like God is telling the truth. That’s why the Bible calls it walking by faith, not talking by faith or even feeling by faith. This faith walk is to be done without the requirement of prior visible, empirical evidence to validate it (2 Corinthians 5:7). It is rather to be based on the integrity of God.

Faith always includes movement and actions aligned with what you believe to be true. Unless your faith makes it all the way down to your feet, it’s not faith. Rather, it’s an intellectual concept that hasn’t been mixed with action, and nothing concrete will show up in your life. If you want a concrete manifestation of God, then what you believe about Him must be married to what you do in light of that belief. Exercising faith takes God’s involvement in your life from a theory in your mind to a reality in your life.

A number of years ago, the church where I serve looked for ways to curb its electricity bills. As a result, we installed motion-detector lighting in certain rooms. That means the lights come on only when motion is detected. If there’s no motion, there’s no light. This also means the lights go off on their own when people leave without turning them off. Then the lights come back on when motion is again detected.

Similarly, God will give you the power and light you need when you need it, but He’ll wait until He detects motion on your part. If there’s no movement in faith, there’s no power in your life. The two are tied together. You must trigger the use of His power in your life, and you do that through actions carried out in faith.

God is real. He has great power. But He will not manifest that power in the ways you need Him to until He sees the motion of your life in faith. If there is no movement, His power lies dormant even though it’s there to be accessed at any time. It’s in living a life of faith that we gain God’s approval (Hebrews 11:2).

Here’s another way I define faith:

Faith is acting like it’s so even when it’s not so, in order that it might be so simply because God said so.

It is in living a life of faith, just like the kingdom heroes the author examines throughout this chapter, that we gain God’s approval (Hebrews 11:2).