You Can Live by Faith Even in the Dark

Allowing faith to coexist with death is important because sometimes we try to use faith to avoid death when God is asking us to use faith to deal with death. Instead of walking through death experiences with grace, we think we can believe, hope, trust, claim, quote, and pray our way out of them. When that doesn’t work, we blame ourselves for our lack of faith, or we get mad at God for not holding up his end of the deal, or we pendulum back and forth between the two.

Death, by definition, is beyond human control. If you think every bad thing that happens is because you didn’t have enough faith, you’re going to spend a lot of time feeling ashamed and condemned. Plus, what we are suffering from or what we have lost is only part of our story. Faith in God allows us to see deaths in their wider context: they are just one part of a complex, long, layered, beautiful life.

Hebrews 11 lists numerous people from Israel’s history. It’s easy to look at that list and think, Wow, those men and women were incredible. They believed, and God did miracles. Their faith was proved by their life.

But look at verse 13: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.”

They didn’t just live in faith; they died in faith, knowing that God is faithful in this age and in the age to come.

Having faith in God doesn’t mean you never lose a job, loved one, or friendship. It means that even when you lose what you thought you couldn’t survive without, you keep living. You keep loving. You keep giving. Your pain runs deep, but your faith runs deeper. Your circumstances have changed, but God hasn’t.

Respond

The next time you think your death experience is a sign that you lack faith, ask God to show you how it might be an opportunity to walk by faith.