Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen

I wonder how often something keeps us from God. How often does something
keep us from believing and trusting in him enough to really live up to the
definition of what faith is all about. I'm sure you remember the scripture:
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." (KJV) or perhaps a more modern translation would explain it better:
"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it
gives us assurance about things we cannot see." (NLT) (Hebrews 11:1)

What keeps us from having that assurance about things we cannot see? If
faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen, why do
so many of us who claim to have faith worry so much about the future?

Many times I think we are like the man in this little story: It seems that a
man descended into a deep well by sliding down a rope which was supposed to
reach the bottom, but when he came to the end of the rope, his feet still
could not touch the bottom. He held on, but because his strength was gone
and he could not climb back up. Finally he could hold on no longer and he
let go fearing the worst. He fell three inches to the bottom.

This is the same problem some of us have today. Some of us are just 3 inches
from trusting God, but we are using all of our strength to hold on to our
doubts and fears. We can't make ourselves trust God and refuse to trust
anyone but ourselves. One man said, "He who cannot let go, cannot hang on,"
he's talking about holding to faith in God and really trusting him. Before
we can let God help heal our hurts and comfort us in our difficulties we
must have faith enough to let go. We must believe in God, his strength, his
power and his ability to help us.

Sadly far too often we to try and hold on to our sanity, to try and reason
everything out for ourselves, to "fix" things, make them all better, to
solve all of our own problems and then we are crushed when we can't do it.

At some point in our Christian walk we are going to have to follow the old
adage, "Let go and let God." In other words, some time we are going to have
to let go of the rope, stop trying to fix the unfixable and turn it over to
God. I don't know about you, but I'm not so worried about having a faith
that can move mountains as I am having a faith that will help me make it
through tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. The writer of
Hebrews also tells us in Hebrews 13:5, ". For God has said, "I will never
fail you. I will never abandon you."

That's the faith that I'm trying for, how about you? What is it that is
keeping you three inches from God? Maybe it's time to let go and let him
handle the problem and fix the unfixable!

Russ Lawson