Living His WordSample

Hebrews 11 is all about faith and it lists a number of examples from the Old Testament of people who accomplished great things by faith. It begins in verse 1 by defining faith as “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith, one might say, is knowledge of things that are not readily available to the five senses.

That’s why it takes faith to believe there is a God. Although God reveals Himself to us in many ways, He’s not available to our senses the way creaturely things are available. Indeed, for God to successfully reveal Himself to us He must do so indirectly, through creaturely things we can perceive. Thus, for example, God’s authoritative word comes to us indirectly through the medium of the Bible. It takes faith to believe that the words of the Bible we can see and hear are actually God’s words.

Our verse for today tells us that it is impossible to please God without faith. It pleases God when someone turns in faith toward His revelation… when someone earnestly seeks His presence. It pleases God when someone turns away from feeble attempts to solve the cares and concerns of life and comes to Him seeking His will and purpose.

If it’s time for you to turn toward God and earnestly seek Him out, then you can be assured there are rewards for making the effort. Coming to God is not done in vain. God may be found by the earnest seeker who can look beyond the cloak of creaturely existence with the eyes of faith and see the God who has the power to bestow the appropriate reward. What kind of reward is that? From the examples given in Hebrews 11, we can see that it can be virtually anything – even stopping the mouths of lions and the conquering of kingdoms.