We Walk By Faith
"So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him."
2 Corinthians 5:6-9
Have you ever seen a mirage? A mirage is a false perception - an optical illusion. Maybe you've seen the visible effects of heat waves rising up from a hot road or the top of a wood burning stove - that is a mirage. Mirages are commonly experienced as someone in the desert thinking they see a sheet of water off in the distance; yet to their dismay (and often after miles of walking) they discover that their eyes, their perception, had tricked them. They had been easily tricked because they desired something to drink! A vision of what they thought was water informed their decision making, and their decision making informed their steps. The disappointment of that situation is amplified by their thirst, tiredness, and frustration.
Without becoming too poetic, can I say that life is full of spiritual mirages? False perceptions - illusions of the inner vision. Too often we are caught, thinking we see a way out of a situation, or a way to remedy an issue, only to find later that we had been led on by our imagination. In its most extreme sense, this is illustrated in Proverbs 14:12 -
"There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death."
What seems right is not always what is right. What is apparent is not always accurate. Our physical eyes can play tricks on us, leading to costly and even deadly mistakes. Much in the same way, and perhaps to greater detriment, out spiritual eyes can play tricks on us as well. Our own sinful nature, coupled with the deception and temptation of the Evil One, will often lead us astray. Even following our heart, a notion that seems noble and innocent, is warned against in scripture! So what are we to do?
In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul is explaining to the Corinthian church that this world is not our home. He opens the chapter by saying (I paraphrase) "even if our earthly home, our body, is utterly destroyed, we have a heavenly home prepared by the one who speaks all things into existence." This is a comforting truth, and a blessed one, to know that this world is not all that there is. Our stock is not valued in terms of earthy treasure, and our experience here is not the ultimate one. However, that puts us in a place of tension. We are in tension because we are constantly balancing and trying to reconcile the earthly with the heavenly. We are constantly in limbo, at least in our minds, between making good and right decisions on earth, but knowing that one day this will all be dissolved.
At home with the body, absent from the Lord. Away from the body, at home with the Lord. With these being the options, it is easy to agree with the Apostle Paul that "we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord." We are tempted, because of this, to disregard our earthly life. To count it as worthless and meaningless and just a time of indifference until we make it to where we are going. That is tempting, friend, but isn't that a discouraging and empty view of life? Certainly, God has left us on this third rock from the sun for a reason. So we receive this injunction from Paul - "whether we are at home or away we make it our aim to please him." A lofty charge indeed, how are we to go about this task? Paul's reasoning for this mindset comes earlier in the paragraph, "we walk by faith and not by sight."
We walk, that is, with spiritual eyes. We walk making decisions and choices and weighing options based on spiritual wisdom rather than purely human perception. Physical vision, human perception, can get us into trouble. Human perception can convince us to live a lie in order to preserve a reputation. Human perception can convince us to climb the ladder of success by stepping on those below us. Human perception can convince us to place our values in monetary gains, social status, and possessions rather than seeing Christ as our greatest treasure, and finding our value in the redemption he purchased for us on the Cross. Walking by faith is feasting our eyes on Christ rather than darting our eyes back and forth between all our temporary troubles.
Treasuring Christ and walking by faith can lead to difficult and controversial decisions, but when we walk by faith, we aim to please him rather than "keeping the peace" in our own lives (Luke 14:26) . When we walk by faith, we are concerned with our relationship with Him above someone else's perception of us (1 Samuel 16:7). When we walk by faith, we are concerned with keeping in step with the Spirit, and not fulfilling the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). When we walk by faith, we know the roughness of our journey now is worth it, because we are looking forward and trusting God with our eternal future (Heb. 11:10). When we walk by faith, the decision to do what is right outweighs the very real temptation to foster earthly gain (Matt. 16:24-26).
"So we are always of good courage" as Paul says. Courage because we know even death, for the believer in Christ, is nothing to fear. Courage because we know that while this life is full of difficult and draining decisions, the eye of faith in Christ leads us on the path that he deems best. Courage because we know that sometimes what is clear by faith is blurry by sight, and what seemed clear by sight is often revealed to be a false perception - a "mirage" when viewed through the eyes of faith.
In love,
Pastor Aaron Frost
February 12, 2021
