“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8) When we follow God's call and purpose, we may not know where it will take us, but Jesus will reveal His purpose and plan for our life. The road may be difficult and challenging at times, but the 'Carpenter from Galilee' has the master plan!
Christian ‘faith’ does not produce in us a know it all, understand it all, or I can explain it all attitude. Instead, faith comes out of a lowly and humble heart that looks to God for the answers to the big questions of life. The short legs of reason and science can not explain the deep questions of the human heart, neither can they satisfy our longing to understand that which is outside their scope of investigation.
Faith is not a leap into the darkness of irrationalism but a step into the light of God’s revelation. Faith doesn’t call us to swim in ignorance by remaining lazy in our investigation of truth, or to build our understanding on presumption and wishful thinking. As Christians, our faith is based upon the truth of what God has revealed in His Word and through Jesus Christ.
And while faith does not explain everything, it does give us warrant and reasons to trust in Christ. No one understands ‘how’ the universe came into existence. Science can tell us about the fine tuned conditions that existed, but it can’t tell us who orchestrated the conditions. As believers, we understand that God is the final integration point of all truth and that He is the uncaused cause of all physical reality.
We all accept things we can not explain. For example, the subjectivity of love and beauty are present in the heart of man, even though we can’t explain the phenomena of subjectivity from a naturalistic worldview. Vance Havner, an old Southern Baptist evangelist from South Carolina once said, “I don’t understand how a black cow can eat green grass and produce white milk, but I sure like ice cream!” If we wait to completely understand a subject before we embrace it, we’ll never embrace anything except our own skepticism.
God has spoken to us. He has spoken clearly. He has spoken in the Bible. Like Abraham, sometimes we follow the Lord’s guidance without having the full picture of where He is taking us. We are called to walk by faith as we lean upon the everlasting truth of God’s redemptive love for mankind that is revealed in the pages of Scripture. And while we don’t understand ‘how’ God could raise Jesus from the dead, or ‘how’ His death was a ransom for our sin, we do know that God revealed His holiness, love, justice and mercy through the Cross. We may not know it all, but through faith…We Know Enough!
