Introduction – When Trouble Piles Up Fast
Have you ever had one of those days when everything seems to go wrong at once—one problem triggering the next like falling dominoes?
I once read a brief accident report from a bricklayer that captures it perfectly.
A hurricane left loose bricks on a rooftop. He filled a barrel to lower them, but the barrel outweighed him. As it plunged he shot upward, colliding with the barrel on the way down, banging his head on the beam and pinching his fingers. When the barrel hit the ground and burst, he shot down, met it again, and finally landed on a pile of spilled bricks just before the empty barrel crashed on his head.
His conclusion was dry: “I respectfully request sick leave.”
It’s funny on paper—but all of us have felt that chain-reaction of trouble: a medical scare, a sudden expense, a broken relationship. Christians are not immune. Jesus told us plainly, “In this world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33).
The difference for a believer is not that we escape hardship but that we live by faith. Hebrews 10:38 says, “The just shall live by faith.”
Faith is not a warm feeling or a flash of optimism. Faith is confidence in God when circumstances look chaotic.
Hebrews 11—the great “faith chapter”—profiles men and women who trusted God when life offered no visible guarantees. Their stories show how faith holds steady in three of the hardest situations:
1. When God seems silent
2. When God seems unfeeling
3. When God seems to contradict Himself
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1. Living by Faith When God Seems Silent
Few lives illustrate this better than Job. In a single season he lost his wealth, his children, his health, and the respect of his community. Yet the deepest wound was God’s silence. Job longed to present his case, but every prayer seemed to bounce off the ceiling. Still he declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
Maybe you’ve been there. You followed God faithfully, and suddenly the map changed. Just when you thought you knew the answers, someone changed the questions. You looked for God’s hand and heard nothing.
James Dobson tells of a truck driver who illustrates that tension. Driving too fast on a mountain road, he lost control and went over the edge. Thrown from the cab, he managed to grab a branch jutting from the cliff. Dangling there with his strength failing, he shouted, “Is anybody there?”
A voice answered, “Yes, I am here. Let go of the branch and trust Me.”
He looked at the wreck far below and cried out, “Is anybody else there?”
Faith is what you cling to when the heavens are silent and the options all look bad.
Hebrews 11 lists people who clung like that: Abel who offered his best and was murdered; Enoch who walked with God until God simply took him; Noah who built an ark for decades while neighbors laughed; Abraham who left his homeland without knowing where he was going; Sarah who believed for a child long after her body said no; Moses who chose the hardship of leadership over royal privilege; Israel who stepped into the Red Sea with only God’s word beneath their feet; Rahab who risked everything to hide two spies.
Some of them received miraculous deliverance. Others did not. Verses 35–38 describe saints who were tortured, mocked, flogged, chained, stoned, sawn in two, or killed by the sword—people “of whom the world was not worthy.” They “received not the promise” in this life.
Why? Were their prayers defective? Did they lack faith? No. They knew that some promises are bigger than earthly rescue. They trusted the eternal reward that suffering cannot touch.
Think of the three Hebrews before Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us… but if not, we will not serve your gods” (Daniel 3:17–18). Whether or not God intervened, their loyalty was settled.
That is living by faith when God seems silent.
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2. Living by Faith When God Seems Unfeeling
Sometimes the challenge is not silence but what feels like divine indifference.
Consider Moses. For forty years he shepherded sheep in Midian, waiting on a promise. Then came forty more years of leading a rebellious nation across a desert. Through every complaint and crisis, the vision of Canaan kept him going.
At the end, God said, “You shall see the land before you, but you shall not go there” (Deuteronomy 32:52). From a human point of view it seems harsh. Why deny this faithful servant the goal he had pursued for eight decades?
Yet Moses died in God’s arms and was raised to heavenly life (Jude 9). The earthly Canaan was only a shadow of the true Promised Land. God’s “no” became a far greater “yes.”
We often experience something similar. We pray for healing and don’t receive it, or for a door to open and it stays closed. We wonder, Lord, don’t You see how much this matters?
From our side the heavens can look unfeeling. But the very denial can be grace, because God is always working toward a larger joy.
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3. Living by Faith When God Seems to Contradict Himself
Sometimes God’s action doesn’t just feel silent or distant—it seems to go against what He has already promised.
Think of Abraham. One night God took him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars… so shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5). Abraham must have thrilled at the thought. But the years dragged on.
Age fifty came and went, then sixty, then seventy. Still no child. Silence from heaven.
Finally, when Abraham was one hundred and Sarah ninety, God kept His word. Isaac, the child of promise, was born. The waiting had been long, but joy made every year worth it.
Then, without warning, God spoke again: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you” (Genesis 22:2).
Can you imagine the questions?
Lord, You promised descendants through Isaac. You commanded us not to kill. How can this be Your voice?
It made no sense.
Yet Genesis 22 shows no argument from Abraham. Every action—rising early, saddling the donkey, gathering wood—is saturated with quiet trust. When Isaac asked where the lamb was, Abraham replied, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (v. 8).
At the last moment the angel of the Lord stopped his hand. God provided a ram. And He revealed the deeper truth: the covenant never depended on Isaac; it depended on God alone.
That is still true. Our future does not rest on a career, a bank account, a carefully built plan, or even family relationships. All of those are gifts, but they are not the foundation. The future rests on the God who provides.
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Bringing the Three Portraits Together
Job, Moses, Abraham—three different seasons of faith:
Job trusted when God was silent.
Moses trusted when God’s plan felt unfeeling.
Abraham trusted when God’s command seemed to contradict His promise.
Their lives testify that God is faithful even when nothing adds up.
The writer of Hebrews sums it up in a single sentence:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
Faith sees what isn’t visible, touches what isn’t tangible, hears when heaven is quiet. Faith keeps walking.
These stories are not museum pieces. They are road maps for the Christian life.
We will all meet seasons when God seems silent, unfeeling, or even contradictory. Faith doesn’t deny the struggle. Faith believes in the dark what God has shown in the light.
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Living This Out Today
How does this look in ordinary life?
It looks like the young mother who prays for a child’s healing and plans the funeral anyway, convinced God’s love is undiminished.
It looks like the worker passed over for promotion who keeps showing up with integrity, trusting God’s timing more than office politics.
It looks like the believer who stays generous when finances tighten, because he knows his security is in God’s provision.
It looks like the widow who lights a candle in an empty kitchen and whispers, “I will bless the Lord at all times.”
This is not blind optimism. It is anchored confidence in the character of God.
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The Greater Story Behind Every Story
Why can we trust God this way? Because of Jesus.
Hebrews 12:2 tells us to fix our eyes on “Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus lived every aspect of Hebrews 11:
He was silent before His accusers, trusting His Father’s will.
He endured what looked like divine abandonment: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”
He fulfilled promises that seemed impossible—the Holy One dying and yet bringing life.
On the cross He proved once and for all that apparent contradictions are never the final word. The resurrection shouts that God always provides.
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The Call
So, what do we do when all is not well?
When heaven is silent, we trust like Job: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
When God’s plan feels unfeeling, we walk on like Moses, confident that His “no” conceals a better “yes.”
When God’s command seems to contradict His promise, we believe like Abraham that “The Lord will provide.”
Faith is not pretending everything is fine. Faith is staking your life on the character of God when nothing looks fine.
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Final Gospel Invitation
If today you feel like that bricklayer in miniature—hit from every side, bruised in ways no one sees—this chapter of Scripture is for you.
Hebrews 11 reminds us that faith is not the absence of pain but the presence of trust. And Hebrews 12 points us to the One who endured every test and now stands as our perfect example and Savior.
Lift your eyes to Him. The same God who called Job to trust, who welcomed Moses home, who provided for Abraham, is faithful to you.
