Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. Every word in that statement is powerful and remarkable, worthy of note and attention. The real substance and the real evidence of everything not yet tangible is faith. We can hold on and latch unto faith, we can stand on faith, we can sleep on faith. By faith you can go up while others are going down. You can win over the battles of life by the weapon of faith. You can overcome challenges and temptations by faith. By faith, people would seal a deal with a handshake and bet their lives on the agreement regardless of how much money is at stake. Without faith it is impossible to achieve anything. This is because you have to first believe that you can achieve a thing before you devout your time to its actualization.
Faith is a substance…we can substantiate our expectation of the next generation by our faith in them and their future. It is our hope and prayer that the next generation of us will get their acts together and we demonstrate that faith by delegating responsibilities and expecting them to deliver. We don’t have tomorrow to teach, train, mentor, and guide them to become the future we have prayed for. After all, today is the future we prayed about yesterday. Our faith in them and in their ability to deliver substantiates and delivers our expectation of them, today. Faith is now. It requires that you suppress fear and doubt and take a chance, now. Faith expects you to look at the bright side of things and let your decisions and actions reflect your optimism rather than your pessimism, your future rather than your past. This is the only way you could muster enough courage to embark on a task which you have tried unsuccessfully in the past.
Faith is believing and behaving. With the heart we believe, with the mouth we confess and with our actions we affirm. It is out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, so you cannot believe east and confess west yet going south. Faith demands that your heart, your mouth and your feet are in agreement and working towards the same vision and direction. If your mouth is not in alignment with your heart, faith will not produce, and if your feet are not in alignment with your heart and mouth, faith profits nothing. But faith is a very potent force, when it is engaged according to its principle. Whatever the heart of man can conceive and believe he can achieve if he would let his hands and feet engage in the activities that guarantee performance. In physics, we are told that work is done when a force moves a body through a distance in the direction of the force. Faith is a force, and a powerful one for that matter. It attracts and engages natural forces to perform.
Back in the day at the pharmacy school, faith sustained us and faith graduated us. We were so poor and so broke yet so confident that all we needed to do was survive the professor‘s eyeball, and we would become relevant in society. Some days we drank water and went to class. Some of us didn’t know where the next meal would come from. We were so skinny from hunger yet so confident of our future. It has been twenty years now since we graduated yet some of us are yet to see the kind of future we thought we would glide into in our first year of graduation. But faith in ourselves, faith in our future, faith in our God, faith in our certification and training and faith in our knowledge of the subject matter kept us going through one huddle after the other even on empty stomachs. When all else fails, faith fails not.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen. Recently I had told some people somethings and expected them to believe me after all I had no reason whatsoever to tell lies…surprisingly they did not take my word for it. At some point I got frustrated with all manner of questions repeated in different ways, as if I was expected to be telling anything less than the absolute truth. I had to provide the evidence for every claim I made, and the burden of proof was upon me. In the issues of life, faith provides the proof that you need as evidence. There is always the substance of faith and the evidence of faith. The evidence of faith is your action and the evidence of what you are after is your faith that drives you. A man moves fast or slow in life, not by what he drives but by what drives him. If faith drives you, your attitude will show it. If fear drives you, your attitude will show. Sometimes we do things, not out of faith but out of fear. Whatever is not of faith is probably of fear, and most times what you fear comes upon you.
I have seen people pray, not out of faith that God heals the sick for example but out of fear that someone may die. If you listen to the words and tone of their prayer, you could decipher if it is motivated by faith or by fear or a mixture of both. If your prayer is not answered, make sure it is not because faith was not found in it even when you spent hours praying and days going to church. Some people go to church and engage in religious activities yet have no faith even since the time of Jesus. You could be one of those. Religiosity is not faith.
By faith Abraham, by faith Sarah, by faith Joseph…and the list is long. After I have gone to the other side, would they say of me by faith Mezie…? That is the question for today. Some people have not succeeded because they are too afraid of failure. When fear stops you from daring you have failed already. If you could get started, the task is half done. Jesus, for the crown that awaited him, not only accepted but endured the cross. The cross was not palatable, but the crown was not negotiable. When what you want in life or out of life becomes so compelling that it is not negotiable, then your faith can drive you to the finish line. The faith that delivers overcomes obstacles, it bulldozes through fierce oppositions and dares the impossible. The faith that wins must be unadulterated and unmingled. The faith that calls those things that be not as though they were, creates those things that be from things that be not.
But what is most interesting for me in faith is that it is now. Now, faith is. Faith understands the urgency of now. Faith does not procrastinate, and it does not shy away from duty. It has roots and stems, and it must be rooted in something real. Even though some of us are tempted to lose faith in humanity given our experiences, faith believes, faith trusts, faith accommodates, faith builds bridges, faith extends a hand of fellowship, faith defies the weather or season or protocols, faith works within or without tradition, faith invests, faith builds, faith blesses, faith shares…..If you give food to someone who doesn’t have faith, and you want to share the food you gave him with him he would find enough excuses in his mind why he would not share the food. He would be like the proverbial child that put his bread behind so his father would not share in it, only for the dog to take the food from him. Basically, he had no faith that his father wouldn’t finish the bread he so desperately wanted. But he forgot who gave him the bread in the first place. We know how to celebrate the gift more than the giver. Faith demands that I wake up in the morning and create my day by my words and match up with actions.
You can grow in faith. When faith drives you towards your destination it changes you along the way. Growth cannot happen without change. Work is not done without change happening. At the beginning your potential faith suffers some inertia, until your faith builds up to a threshold then potential faith becomes kinetic. This change could be brought about by increase in knowledge. For example, as your knowledge of God increases, your faith in Him also increases and so it is with your team. As you work with and know people, especially the good ones, your faith in them increases and your confidence level also increases in the project in which you work together with them. The same principle is applicable with fear. If you met someone as a pastor and then realize he is a crooked person, your faith in his friendship, his ministry, and his words is replaced by fear and doubt as the case may be. Haven’t we experienced that before? Knowledge modifies faith.
In summary, the force of faith is able to bring to life those things that don’t exist and those things that we want to see. It is the creative power of faith that makes all things possible to them that believe. A mentor that has faith in his proteges pours out himself into them without reservation, and the law of faith demands that you see what you believe and what you say. Be careful what you fear, it could come to you as surely as what your faith attracts. For the fear in man is a snare.. So as surely as faith leads to actualization fear has the opposite effect. Mentors understand the place of faith in productive mentorship. .May God grant us understanding
Mezie Okolo @TheRitePlace