How 400 Years of Slavery Can Increase My Faith

There is an old saying, “seeing is believing”…but put in a biblical context of faith, it rightly gets turned on its ear and becomes, “believing is seeing.”  Jesus stressed this kind of blind, unwavering faith in God’s goodness, in His unfailing love, that he seeks my unfaltering loyalty to Him when my senses, everything happening in my life, make the opposite seem true.   The Savior said to “walk by faith and not by sight.” It’s easier said than done. ..at least in my experience.  When God tells me in His Word that He has a wonderful plan for my life, but my “sight” indicates the exact opposite, what do I do?  I hunker down and put my faith in His faithfulness.  Sometimes kicking and screaming.   

I was looking for stories of this faith in Scripture and I realized that the story of the Exodus highlights the exit from Egypt, but really doesn’t go into the horror of the Israelites enslavement.  The Israelites were slaves in Egypt for 400 years…400 years!! To put that in perspective…that means our identity as Americans, a nation of freeman did not begin until 2007.   Abraham Lincoln…not president…but a slave.  George Washington…a slave…our entire history as a nation…POOF.  Gone.  We would have to trace our heritage all the way back to the time Jamestown became a colony (1607) to find a time when our ancestors were not slaves.  How long does God require of us faith without seeing or hearing Him. Apparently for the Israelites it was 400 years.  That, my friends, was one long dry spell.  Of course Hebrews 11 speaks of many who believed God (the great cloud of witnesses), but never “saw” even to the end of their life.  (guess  now I’ll quit whining about my “light and momentary” troubles.  I’ve never been a slave. …although sometimes I seem like one to my boys…Life is good. Lol!)

A great illustration of the concept of “believing is seeing” can be illustrated in the following story: I about heard the testimony of a woman at my church who came to ask for healing prayer for a cancerous lump in her breast.   She received prayer and felt God tell her that she was healed.  As is my pastor’s custom he told her to still go to the doctor.  So she did.  The first doctor upon examining her confirmed that the lump was still there.  She told him it was not, she wanted a second opinion.  The 2^nd doctor again, upon examining her confirmed the first doctor’s conclusion that indeed the lump was still in her breast.  This time, she declared that God had told her she was healed and she’d like a 3^rd opinion.  Now, a bit annoyed, the 3^rd doctor also confirmed the lump.  Unmoved, she stood her ground and demanded an X-Ray (or MRI…I don’t remember).   The X-ray showed no lump.  Of course the doctors were baffled and examined her one more time.  To their astonishment not only was there no lump, there was no trace of anything abnormal.  She was given a clean bill of health.  God is faithful.  She indeed was healed. In the face of evidence to the contrary she believed God and was rewarded.  There are hundreds of stories of this in the Bible.  And God has not changed.

 So now to bring this home, what this means to me is that when I have a boss who humiliates me, or a friend who betrays me or people who gossip about me behind my back, I look to God who “rejoices over me with singing”, when I hate my job or can’t find a job or my circumstance seems unbearable, I am reminded that God’s plan for my life is truly wonderful, and God has promised to provide all my needs.  He truly “owns the cattle on a thousand hills”.  I could go on.  How many of His promises to us in His word have we never even read, much less believed.  That’s a huge challenge for me. Time to get reading.