Well, one more day and "if the Lord wills," my wife Melody and I will be flying out to Kenya, East Africa once again. It's been 8 years since we left. We are excited to return, yet we have a certain amount of apprehension.

Eight years is a long time and things have changed — some for the better and some for the worse. We have been there, seen it all before, and have stayed in touch with friends. We have an idea what to expect, yet even with all of that contact, we know we won't truly appreciate the changes in the country until we see and experience them ourselves. That's how life is; people can try to explain things to us, yet we realize that we have to experience some things before we will truly understand them.

Our faith, however, is not based on our understanding everything; it is based on God's ability to hold us in his hands no matter where we might be. We must come to grips with the fact that we just don't have the ability to understand everything about all spiritual matters.

I don't know if you have ever noticed, but the phrase, "like unto" (in the King James Version of the Bible) is used over 30 times in the New Testament. That phrase is God literally saying, "I want to try to explain this to you in terms you might understand, so what I am trying to explain is 'kind of like' this." Some things are simply beyond our limited comprehension as humans to fully grasp, but we can respond to God with faith and let our Father reveal them to us in His time. In this case, believing is necessary for our seeing many of the things of God.

A perfect example of this is Abraham. Paul wrote the following about him:

When God promised Abraham that he would become the father of many nations, Abraham believed him. God had also said, "Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars," even though such a promise seemed utterly impossible! And Abraham's faith did not weaken, even though he knew that he was too old to be a father at the age of one hundred and that Sarah, his wife, had never been able to have children. Abraham never wavered in believing God's promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God. He was absolutely convinced that God was able to do anything he promised. (Romans 4:18-21 NLT)

Believing is seeing!
How about you? Can you be absolutely convinced that God is able to do anything He promised? The Holy Spirit reminds us that Faith "is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see." (Hebrews 11:1 NLT)

There is an old saying that goes somewhat like this, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." How about you? How's your faith? For some folks, "seeing is believing," but for Christians, "believing is seeing."

May our God Bless each of us as we strive to increase our faith in His promises!