The great challenge about faith is it must be demonstrated now.I do mean right NOW! Yes – look at your watch, your phone, or the clock on the wall. Whatever time it’s telling you, that’s when you need to demonstrate active faith.Yesterday’s already gone. Whatever faith you may or may not have shown at that point is now in the past. It’s behind you, and that time is gone. PFFT! It’s not coming back.And I don’t mean tomorrow either. Tomorrow hasn’t come yet – – and it might not. Or, if it does, YOU might not be in it. Maybe tomorrow will arrive for everyone else, but – – – you’ll be absent.I’m not trying to be morbid here; I’m just forcing a reality check. I happen to know a few people that were smack dab in the middle of making plans for the next day when their “appointed time” arrived (Heb. 9:27). Don’t count on something you don’t yet have.Here’s my point. If you’re going to exercise real faith, you need to exercise it this very moment. Don’t kick it down the road. Don’t try to slot it into some future schedule because today “has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34). It’s today that requires a dose of strong faith.Faith is “….the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). That gives all this a new twist. I’m talking about the kind of faith that’s exercised when the chips are down, when the bottom falls out, and when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place.This kind of faith is vital in desperate moments. It’s the remedy when despair permeates all the pores of your soul, when you’re tempted to disguise your fears in a cloak of cynicism and anger, and when suffocating layers of fatigue have reduced your once-raging flames of optimism to a dim spark.To be blunt, I’m talking about the kind of faith that rises up when all reasonable, conventional, plausible, and logical paths have been cut off. If those options are still alive – – then faith tends to be Plan B. It’s unfortunate. But being as we’re human, it’s just the way it is.That’s why God lets life and some of the issues we care most about completely fall apart. It’s why we get painted into a corner, and it’s why we find our backs against the wall. We are naturally wired to see faith as less necessary when things are going our way. Hebrews chapter 11 is often called the “faith chapter” in the Bible. This passage lays out a list of people that demonstrated great faith. We read there about folks that were told to do the impossible, asked to believe the unreasonable, tested to endure the unbearable, and called to become the deplorable.In every situation, their normal human capacities weren’t up to the task. For example, Abraham was instructed to kill his son and Moses met the Red Sea. Barren Sarah was promised a son and little David confronted a giant. For doing what was right, Rahab faced possible treason and Daniel found himself with the lions. For these heroes – and for others like them – all their reasonable, conventional, plausible, and logical paths were cut off. Their only recourse was to show faith – “the substance of things hoped for.” They did that.It’s often true that one of the hardest parts about exercising faith is we first have to get to the end of our rope. The hair-pulling, nail-biting, and hand-wringing that accompanies this process is painful. God has sovereignly designed these tense situations so we molt out of our small and inadequate shells. He wants to change us, and He wants to grow us. We have to be fitted into new shells that are larger, better, and more suited for our journey. In that process – if we don’t fight against the testing of our faith – we will discover the things we once knew and were will pale against the things we will learn and become. The hard truth about faith is we have to let go of control. Events must be taken out of our hands and placed into God’s instead. That’s difficult to do, I understand.But it’s often only when we reach that point, that our looming defeat can become our greatest victory. It’s only then that darkness becomes light, and we see more clearly.No matter what we face, we must keep exercising faith.
