Faith is one of the most misused words in the Christian vocabulary. We treat it like a synonym for positive thinking. We treat it like a stronger word for trying really hard to believe. We treat it like an emotional state you summon when life is collapsing — close your eyes, squeeze tight, hope nothing breaks.
That is not what faith is. That is not what the Bible says faith is. And until we recover what biblical faith actually is, we will keep mistaking weakness for weakness when what God is offering us is strength of a kind the natural mind cannot manufacture.
Here is what I want to say to you, plainly: faith is the divine possibility of heaven operating within the human heart before anything in the natural realm changes.
Two ways of seeing
There are two ways of seeing everything. The natural way and the heavenly way.
The natural man — the one without spiritual sight — sees limitations. He sees the bank statement, the diagnosis, the broken marriage, the wayward child, the closed door, the closed mouth. He sees what is, and what is becomes the boundary of what could be.
The man of faith looks at the same scene and sees something different. Not because he is naive. Not because he is denying what is real. Because he has been given another set of eyes. He has been given the capacity to see divine deliverance in the middle of the impossible.
That is not optimism. Optimism is a posture. Faith is a substance. There is a difference.
Hebrews 11:1, slowly
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Read it slowly. Read it again. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Substance — not feeling, not hope, not wish. Something with weight. Something with material reality. Faith gives hope its weight.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen. Evidence — not proof you can show a courtroom, but inner conviction that arises from somewhere deeper than the senses.
What faith is not
Faith is not positive thinking. Positive thinking is a discipline of the natural mind. It is a useful skill. It is not faith. You can be positive about a circumstance God has not approved of, and that is not faith — that is self-delusion.
Faith is not denial of reality. Some people preach a kind of faith that pretends the cancer is not there, the marriage is not breaking. Biblical faith acknowledges the reality of the impossibility — and looks past it to the larger reality of God.
Faith is not emotional excitement. Some preaching teaches that if you can just whip yourself up to feel intensely enough, the miracle will come. That is not faith. Faith can operate in a heart that feels nothing at all.
What faith looked like in real lives
David. When faith moved into David’s heart, he saw Goliath falling before he ever fell. The army of Israel saw a giant. David saw a corpse on the ground in the future tense.
Moses. When Moses walked up to the Red Sea with a million people behind him and chariots closing in, faith had already entered his heart. He saw the sea departing before one wave moved.
The Hebrew children. Three young men stood before a fiery furnace and a king who could end them with a word. They said: “Whether God will deliver us or whether He won’t, we don’t know. One thing we do know — He is able. And another thing we know — we will not bow.”
Elijah. James tells us Elijah was a man just like we are. Same fears. Same limitations. Same passions. But when he prayed it would not rain — it did not rain for three and a half years. What was different? His perspective. He left the door of possibility open.
What to do with this
If you are reading this and there is a wall in your life — a marriage, a child, a body, a bank account, a calling you cannot get traction on — let me give you this.
Leave the door of possibility open.
“God, whether You will or whether You won’t, I don’t know. But I know that You are able. And as for me, I will never give up hope. I will never give up the vision. I will never give up the possibility that You can move in a miraculous way.”
Heaven is already moving in the situations of the people who keep the door of possibility open. The change you see eventually in the natural world begins as a movement of faith in the heart long before the first circumstance shifts.
Faith is not what you think. Faith is heaven, invading the human condition, by way of the human heart, before one thing in the natural world has changed.
The door is open.
— Dr. Stephen Carter, Sr.
