Pulling Against God Part 1 Series

II. We Walk By Faith, Not By Sight

We have been taught that we walk based on the knowledge that we have. Without knowledge we cannot accomplish anything. That is why we make it mandatory that our kids go to school and hopefully will decide to go to college. That college degree will open doors that a high school diploma will not. So based on this understanding, we spend 16-20 years, sometimes longer depending on the area of study, learning secular knowledge to enable us to provide for a comfortable living arrangement in this life. During those 16-20 years of continuous studying, we forget some things while remembering or memorizing enough to move through the system. When we complete our studies and get a job, that job is often based on what you majored in while you were in school. Our expertise on the job is based on what we studied and what we continue to learn. This may work for our secular jobs, but with our spiritual walk, more is required. We cannot walk with God based solely on our knowledge of what is happening around us because we do not know everything. On our jobs, we can make certain decisions based on our training and area of expertise, but with God our areas of expertise may in some cases be null and void. To this point Paul says the following: “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7) The first thing we must recognize is that with God we must walk with blinders on, being totally dependant on Him. Our knowledge should only give us a deeper understanding of God’s ability which will allow us to open the door for God to act.

When Paul made this declaration, he had first walked his readers through a series of comparisons of our temporal home versus our future eternal home. Throughout his comparison, he stressed that our lives here on earth are filled with times that will make us groan due to the burdens we are faced with, but it is all temporary. Finally Paul encourages the reader by re-establishing our position in God and with that knowing that one day we will be with the Lord. After he concludes all of this he says “for we walk by faith and not by sight.” We must get our arms around what this means for us as a Christian. Until we start walking by faith and stop walking by sight, we will continue to pull against God. I believe Paul made the statement at this point so that we could understand that what we see around us is not always definitive of what god is doing in our lives – so we must continue to look to Him.

I am not sure how many of you have seen the movie “Ray” which was based on Ray Charles life, but it contained some insight into what happens to a person who loses their sight. There is a difference between someone who is born blind and someone who loses their sight. I want to use the person who loses their sight, because that is what is required of us to walk by faith – we must lose our individual sight. As long as we can see, we will try to pull God in the direction that we want to go. However, only when we are plunged into total darkness are we willing to allow someone who can see to lead us. When a person who could once see loses their sight, they begin to find ways to compensate for their loss of sight. In the movie based on Ray Charles’s life, it showed his mother teaching him how to get around so that he would not have to be totally dependent on others. She did not want him living with the mindset of being a cripple. Ray Charles learned ways to compensate for his blindness, but he also developed his other senses, his sense of smell, touch and especially hearing. This has been documented in many cases of individual who are blind. They are able to sense and hear things that we do not because we can see with our eyes. And because we can see, we ignore and miss a lot of things that go on around us that a blind person would be sensitive to. Remember in the movie when Ray Charles was at the home of his future wife, he was explaining to her about how he compensates for his blindness. In that scene he references hearing a humming bird outside of the window. His future wife looked outside the window and saw the bird. Ray Charles heard the bird and knew it was there but she had to turn and look for the bird because although she could hear the bird, her senses did not register it because her eyes were elsewhere. When a person becomes blind, their other senses become more sensitive and attuned to what is happening around them. So let’s apply that to the spiritual.