We must see something before we make our ventures! Faith must first have visions: faith sees a light, if you will, an imaginary light, and leaps!

Faith is always born of vision and hope ! We must have the gleam of the thing hoped for shining across the waste before we can have an energetic and energizing faith.

Are we not safe in saying that the majority of people have no fine hopes, are devoid of the vision splendid, and therefore, have no spiritual audacity in spiritual adventure and enterprise? Our hopes are petty and peddling, and they don’t give birth to crusades.

There are no shining towers and minarets on our horizon, no new Jerusalem, and therefore we do not set out in chivalrous explorations.

We need a transformation in the “things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1 KJV).

We need to be renewed in mind, and renewed in mind daily . We need to have the far-off towering summits of vast and noble possibilities enthroned in our imaginations.

Our gray and uninviting horizons must glow with the unfading colors of immortal hopes.

So few men venture out beyond the blazed trail,

’Tis he who has the courage to go past this sign

That cannot in his mission fail.

He will have left at least some mark behind

To guide some other brave exploring mind.

No man is of any use until he has dared everything. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

God is speaking about something immediate in this verse. It is not something He is going to do but something He does do, at this very moment. As faith continues to speak, God continues to give. He meets you today in the present and tests your faith. As long as you are waiting, hoping, or looking, you are not believing. You may have hope or an earnest desire, but that is not faith, for “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). The command regarding believing prayer is: “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). We are to believe that we have received—this present moment. Have we come to the point where we have met God in His everlasting now? A. B. SIMPSON

True faith relies on God and believes before seeing. Naturally, we want some evidence that our petition is granted before we believe, but when we “live by faith” (2 Corinthians 5:7), we need no evidence other than God’s Word. He has spoken, and in harmony with our faith it will be done. We will see because we have believed, and true faith sustains us in the most trying of times, even when everything around us seems to contradict God’s Word.

The psalmist said, “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). He had not yet seen the Lord’s answer to his prayers, but he was confident he would see, and his confidence sustained him.

Faith that believes it will see, will keep us from becoming discouraged. We will laugh at seemingly impossible situations while we watch with delight to see how God is going to open a path through our Red Sea. It is in these places of severe testing, with no human way out of our difficulty, that our faith grows and is strengthened.

Dear troubled one, have you been waiting for God to work during long nights and weary days, fearing you have been forgotten? Lift up your head and begin praising Him right now for the deliverance that is on its way to you. LIFE OF PRAISE

Genuine faith puts its letter in the mailbox and lets go. Distrust, however, holds on to a corner of the envelope and then wonders why the answer never arrives. There are some letters on my desk that I wrote weeks ago, but I have yet to mail them because of my uncertainty over the address or the contents. Those letters have not done any good for me or anyone else at this point. And they never will accomplish anything until I let go of them, trusting them to the postal service.

It is the same with genuine faith. It hands its circumstance over to God, allowing Him to work. Psalm 37:5 is a great confirmation of this: “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this.” He will never work until we commit. Faith is receiving—or even more, actually appropriating—the gifts God offers us. We may believe in Him, come to Him, commit to Him, and rest in Him, but we will never fully realize all our blessings until we begin to receive from Him and come to Him having the spirit of abiding and appropriating.

Dr. Payson, while still a young man, once wrote to an elderly mother who was extremely worried and burdened over the condition of her son. He wrote,

You are worrying too much about him. Once you have prayed for him, as you have done, and committed him to God, you should not continue to be anxious. God’s command, “Do not be anxious about anything” (Philippians 4:6), is unlimited, and so is the verse, “Cast all your anxiety on him” (1 Peter 5:7). If we truly have cast our burdens upon another, can they continue to pressure us? If we carry them with us from the throne of grace, it is obvious we have not left them there. In my own life I test my prayers in this way: after committing something to God, if I can come away, like Hannah did, with no more sadness, pain, or anxiety in my heart, I see it as proof that I have prayed the prayer of faith. But if I pray and then still carry my burden, I conclude my faith was not exercised.

Let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.—Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord ; . . . we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.

After that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

We walk by faith, not by sight.

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.