Word of Encouragement (5/19/2020)
As we continue our reflection on faith, I want to share another excerpt from Vos:
“Whether the call was to believe or to follow, to do or to bear, the obedience [of the Old Testament saints listed in Heb. 11] to it sprang not from any earth-fed sources but from the infinite reservoir of strength stored up in the mountain-land above. If Moses endured it was not due to the power of resistance in his human frame, but because the weakness in him was compensated by the vision of him who is invisible. If Abraham, who had gladly received the promises, offered up his only-begotten son, it was not because in heroic resignation he steeled himself to obedience, but because through faith he saw God is greater and stronger than the most inexorable physical law of nature: ‘For he accounted that God can raise up even from the dead.’ And so in all the other instances. Through faith the powers of the higher world were placed at the disposal of those whom this world threatened to overwhelm, and so the miracle resulted that from weakness they were made strong” (pp. 106-107).
Isn’t this so inspiring and encouraging? We have access to “the mountain-land above,” to the almighty God, to the One who is “greater and stronger than the inexorable physical law of nature,” to “the powers of the higher world”? We have access to these amazing realities by faith—not “some instinct of idealism, some sort of sixth sense for what lies above the common plane of life, as people speak of men of vision who see farther than the mass” but something that only a vision of the invisible God can draw from us. We don’t need to be someone special with extraordinary abilities. We just need this thing called faith.
The good news is that, if we have professed our faith in Jesus Christ, we already have this amazing instrument called faith by being born again. Our eyes have been already opened so that, by faith, we can catch a glimpse of the invisible but most powerful God and the richness of “the mountain-land above”! All we need to do is to continue to sharpen and expand our vision of God by His Word, which is God’s self-revelation to His people. Indeed, a far greater vision of God is available to us than to the Old Testament saints because Christ has come and the Scripture has been completed.
As you begin today, I hope you are excited and motivated by the prospect of living by faith, which enables us to tap into the power of God and the richness of His kingdom, no matter how weak or ordinary we may be, so we can magnify God and His glory!