Faith Is A Heart That Sees

The Lord has been speaking to me about faith and doubt, and I have been seeing faith with new eyes.  I have always been interested in the matter of faith and its substance, where it comes from, and how it grows. Faith is of God and not of man. Faith can no more be generated by an act of will than a planet can be created by someone who wishes to do so. If we can't generate faith by an act of mental willpower,  how then does it grow?  It is a gift that is imparted from God to the one who is seeking God with all of His heart. As with anything else, faith comes as an answer to prayer. Faith comes when God speaks into the spirit of man thus making His word come to life. Faith see's reality because it has heard Him speak.

The word teaches that faith comes by hearing the word of God. Not just the written word, but the word breathed into the heart of man by the Holy Spirit. The Lord is a quickening spirit, and His word quickens our spirit to life. When faith comes to life in the heart, then we can actually see that which is unseen. Faith is the substance of things unseen. All of God’s kingdom, or ultimate truth, is unseen to the natural mind. One must have faith to see it, and faith comes when our eyes are opened.  Our carnal minds cannot see reality, or spiritual truth, because it is fallen and darkened. When we fell in the garden, we fell from Reality.  Our minds were darkened and therefore could only reason away from the truth, and away from Reality (God's true nature, our true nature, and what satisfies and brings life). 

My carnal, fallen mind can only reason things out. It cannot see ultimate truth any more than a blind man can see the sun and the stars. He does not possess the ability to do so, no matter how hard he may will to see. The carnal mind cannot understand the things of the spirit-which is reality. I see this clearly in how the disciples and the Pharisees constantly questioned Jesus, seeking to understand Him with their fallen mind. Jesus would ask them, “Why do you reason? Why do you doubt? Do you still have no faith?" Jesus said that their mental reasoning was doubt and unbelief. In other words, if they had faith they would have no need to try to understand things from a human standpoint because they would already have understanding.  Where there is unbelief, there will be reasoning, and where there is reasoning, there will be doubt.

When we are saved, the Spirit of God quickens us in the inner man, and all of a sudden, we see! Jesus is Lord. That is faith. All reasoning, or doubt, ceases as we bask in the fresh understanding that Jesus is Lord. We know that we are sinners and we know that we need a Savior because we see it with our heart. The word of God came and breathed this vision into the heart, and from the heart the mouth speaks, I believe! From this point, as we walk with God, He takes us from glory to glory, seeing more and more, having our minds transformed to know truth. This is why Paul prayed that the eyes of our heart would be open to know God. Paul was asking God to give the people faith.
As long as we are on this earth, we will have to live by the eyes of faith and refrain from leaning to our own understanding. Our senses are subject to the fallen mind and cannot love God, see God, or know God.
 
I came to believe this as I contrasted doubt and faith, and how Jesus spoke of each. Jesus was amazed by the faith of two individuals in the NT; the centurion and the Syrophenician woman. Both immediately understood realities that others were unable to see or understand. The woman understood that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. She knew that He was merciful because she pushed Him beyond what He was willing to do.  She immediately accepted that she was outside of the covenant, a gentile. She had humility because she saw herself clearly before a mighty God. Finally, she completely and immediately comprehended His statement about not giving bread to the “little dogs”.  And Jesus was amazed.  Clearly, she had understanding that did not come through her mind. Her heart-eyes had been opened.

In stark contrast, in the following chapter, Jesus’s own disciples thought that he was talking about literal bread when he was referring to the doctrine of the Pharisees. And Jesus called their misunderstanding "unbelief". Instead of knowing and believing they reasoned with their intellect: Is he talking about bread because we forgot to bring it? What does he mean to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees? And on and on they would go in circles trying to mentally ascertain his words. They were dull. Blinded. They lacked revelation of spiritual things.

Like the woman, the centurion had spiritual understanding as well. He knew that Jesus had spiritual authority. He knew that anything Jesus said would be obeyed because all things were under his command. He knew that the spiritual realm obeyed Jesus completely just as his soldiers obeyed him. He knew this by faith; he saw it. He got it. God gave this to Him just as God revealed to Peter that Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus told Peter, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but the Spirit of God.  That's faith.   Faith can see, by the Spirit, what the mind cannot know or see or believe. Faith comes by the Spirit and not from the mind. Faith transforms the mind, but it does not originate there.

I believe that as we seek the Lord with our whole heart, He grants us spiritual insight that births faith in various areas. As a young woman, the Lord quickened my heart by His Holy Spirit to be set free from smoking. I look back and see that He stirred my heart. I was bothered, stirred up, and intensely compelled to experience this freedom that I saw in the bible. In my desperation, I sought this freedom with my whole heart until the day that faith came alive inside my heart.  On that day, I saw it; I knew that I was free from that dreaded habit even though I was still smoking.  Until that moment, I felt burdened and enslaved by that habit, but after my eyes were opened to see the truth, I was filled with joy unspeakable "and full of glory" because I saw that Jesus had defeated smoking. Faith came alive. About a week later I entered into the freedom that I knew that I had been given in Christ.  Whoever comes to God must believe that He is, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. God cannot do the seeking for me. As far as I can see, that part is up to me. Yet He gives more grace.

This is so exciting to me, like anything else, faith comes from God! Every good and perfect gift comes from Him. My job is to do the seeking and keep my heart free from idols-and of course, He aides in this too. All of our life is a gift given by God. Of ourselves, we can do nothing.