Only 10% of an iceberg can be seen above water. In the same way, we can only see a tiny part of our reality with our physical eyes. Instead, so much lurks beneath the surface of the physical world we can see, touch, and measure. Unless we put our belief in the unseen world, much of our lives will never make sense. That’s where faith comes in – faith is believing in things unseen, because what is unseen actually makes an eternal impact on your life!
Unseen Beneath the Surface
Today we start a new series I call “Unseen.” On the screen you see a picture of an iceberg, which I chose because of what it represents. If you flew in a helicopter and landed on an iceberg, you would imagine you were on a piece of land covered in snow and ice. If you never got into the water, you could not imagine the full size and scope of that iceberg.
An iceberg is a piece of solid, pure ice that has broken away from a glacier. It’s like an ice cube in your glass; it floats. What you could see if you stood on a glacier is only ten percent of the actual piece of ice. Ninety percent of the iceberg hides unseen beneath the water level, but the fact that you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It simply means that from your perspective, you are limited to experiencing only the ten percent above water.
Important truth: this world is a lot like an iceberg. We see only a small portion of the reality God created.
The very beginning of the Bible gives us the story of how God created the physical world we experience through sight and taste and feel. Then, throughout the Bible we also see glimpses into another world: the spiritual world which is inhabited by beings we can’t see. This is the kingdom where God dwells, on His throne, surrounded by angels. However, there is more to this spiritual world than just the heavenly realms. Scripture also points to evil beings, demons, and a leader who is all that is evil – the accuser – Satan – the Devil.
We will examine these topics in this series. Some people might think this series is fanciful, but scripture tries to teach us that our world is only a portion of all that God created. There is a lot more going on in this world than meet the eye. If we can understand the bigger picture – if we can wrap our minds around the idea that we see only a small portion of the characters involved in our lives – then perhaps we will be better equipped to deal with our adversity, understand our suffering, and fight back in the power of God.
The Hidden Story Behind Job’s Trials
I think the book of Job is a perfect illustration of understanding only a small sliver of the grand narratives of our lives.
In the first two chapters of the book, “The Adversary” strolls into heaven and God asks him if he has taken notice of His righteous servant Job. The Adversary says, “Of course he’s righteous – You’ve blessed him so much.”
So God allowed bad things to happen to Job. His livestock were stolen, his children all died, and he developed sores all over his body. His wife told him to curse God and die.
Remember – WE read the book of Job with a view of the complete iceberg. WE get to see what happened in heaven to cause Job to face all this suffering as a test to prove his righteousness to the Adversary.
Job, however, didn’t get to read the first two chapters of his own book. He didn’t understand why the troubles came into his life all at once. He could see only the top of the iceberg. He experienced all his suffering with no idea why. In fact, at the end of the book, after God speaks to him, Job is never given the same view as we modern-day readers have. At the end of his life he still does not know the WHY of all his trials.
This is a lesson for our own lives. Even though Job didn’t get to see the bigger picture –even through all his toils and troubles – he remained faithful to believe God was at work in his life. He remained righteous and honored God. He kept his confidence in the God he could not see.
That is exactly what each of us is called to do. Our physical eyes allow us to see only our physical world, but God is spirit. Without spiritual eyes and hearts filled with faith, we cannot see God.
This is at the heart of what it means to have faith. We are to believe what we read in the Bible about the spiritual world without first being able to see it or touch it. Faith is believing in the Creator God, the Resurrected Son, and the Holy Spirit because the Bible tells us about them.
Hebrews 1:11 – Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Science can be proven with experiments, but faith in the unseen world is altogether different. The unseen cannot be viewed or measured or touched. It cannot be proven through measurement with 100% accuracy. Even though our hope in Jesus for an eternity with God can’t be measured, we still have confidence and assurance. That’s where faith comes in.
Saint Paul tells us that faith is actually critical for our lives because of its lasting value:
2 Corinthians 4:18 – So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Science can’t explain where we go when we die. Science can’t prove what your purpose on this earth is. Science can’t answer why bad things happen to good people. Yet all these questions are extremely important to the life we live.
This is why Paul also tells us a little later, in 2 Corinthians 5:7: For we live by faith, not by sight.
Many things in our lives depend on understanding what we cannot see. The answers to the questions I just mentioned are beyond what we can see, but we know there have to be answers. That’s where faith in the unseen comes in and provides what could never be physically proven. This is where a belief in the all-loving God informs us. This God created our world, sent His Son to redeem us after we sinned, and empowers us by His Holy Spirit until the day we meet Him in heaven. He gives us a framework to face the challenges of life beyond simply believing that what we can see and measure is all there is to this life.
Trust Falls
We’ve established that faith in something beyond our physical world is extremely important, but how do we increase our faith? Do we just focus harder on God? Or is there a way to actually develop a deeper and stronger faith in God?
Do you remember doing “trust falls” as a kid? You faced away from a friend who promised to catch you, and you simply fell backward. You couldn’t see the other person, but you had faith that your friend would catch you. If you were doing the catching, and if you felt you were pretty strong, you waited until the last second to catch them. They fell back farther than they were comfortable falling. But if they took a step backward, thinking you were going to let them fall, you teased them for not trusting you. At summer camps, they sometimes took it up a notch and had you stand on the edge of a picnic table with your feet at the height of where your team of new friends waited with their arms out ready to catch you.
I’ve seen an interesting thing when people do trust falls. Typically, when this activity is introduced, no one wants to do it. No one has any trust or faith that the group will catch them. Usually, though one brave soul agrees to go first. With bated breath, everyone hopes this kid doesn’t get dropped. If all goes well – guess what? A second kid will volunteer. Why? Because he saw something that gave him confidence that he, too, could fall and be caught by the group. Eventually everyone realizes, through their observations and experiences, that they can trust the group to catch them. Everyone takes a turn.
Our faith in God is based on this same pattern. Our faith grows through micro-transactions – repeated tiny tests and proofs that God can be trusted. Typically, when we first put our faith in Jesus we don’t have a whole lot of trust; but, little by little, we trust God with various parts of our lives and observe to see if we can trust Him to do what His Word says He will do.
- Maybe you try to stop sinning in an obvious part of your life, and (with God’s help) you break a habit you have had for years.
- And maybe you give some money in the offering plate and then realize you don’t even miss it because God is providing all you need.
- So you take bigger steps. You join a small group and share honestly with others, and you watch as God begins to really transform your life.
- And you take the step to tithe and give 10 percent of what you make, and you realize it doesn’t destroy your budget. Somehow you are able to be faithful to God, and He remains faithful to you.
All of these steps require believing in something that cannot be seen, touched, or scientifically proven. Through small steps of faith, by the experience of watching God provide, you are able to grow in your confidence and assurance that God is real, that He loves you, and that one day He will bring you home to be with Him forever.
It’s exciting that our faith can grow not only through our own personal experiences but through the shared stories of others who have seen God provide. Testimonies of God’s active hand are an incredible way to help build one another’s faith!
Several weeks ago I mentioned my desire to begin sharing testimonies more regularly in our services. So far Dr. Larry is the only one who has taken me up on it. He has some amazing testimonies of God’s work that we will share with you later in this series, particularly when I talk about angels. I encourage you – if you are willing to share a way God has been faithful to you, please let me know. I’ll follow up with you and we can figure out how to share your story to help us build our faith.
Jerry
I’m going to take us on an aside right now to tell you an awesome God story in my own life this week.
On Monday, several pastors went to the middle school to offer counseling and comfort to kids who were grieving the loss of an eighth-grade student who had died the week before. I met several troubled kids, and one stood out to me as really bothered, overlooked, and quiet. I worked to connect with him and learn about his life, and I found out he had a really troubled home life. I didn’t know if I would ever see him again, but something about this kid just seemed to click with me.
Fast forward a couple of days. On Thursday, several other pastors and I met with a woman who was interested in moving into the apartment the Inter-Church Council makes available to people who need short-term housing. We had a good meeting, and I learned a lot about this woman and her trials and troubles in life.
The next day I called the woman to tell her she could move into the apartment, and our conversation became a counseling session. Many of her experiences were similar to those of the kids Michelle and I fostered for a decade; so in an effort to help her, I shared some of the things we had learned. Later that night she texted me telling me how helpful the conversation was to her. She wished somebody like me had been the foster parent to her middle school son. And then she told me his name. After I asked her one brief question to confirm, I realized she was the mom of the boy I connected with on Monday.
I don’t know where this is going. But guess what? God knows. This isn’t a coincidence. This is God doing something in the unseen. I am watching it slowly unfold, not even knowing how it will culminate. As I see these pieces come together, though, my faith grows. I see God provide. I see God at work. While it is invisible, through faith it becomes a visible act of God that builds my belief in Him. I share this story with you today because I want it to be one small micro-transaction in your faith journey – one small story that builds your faith in the unseen hand of God.
Conclusion
Like it or not, we now live in a secular world where everyone assumes science can prove everything. People want certainty. They like being able to see and touch what they know. They like having confidence that they understand the physical world perfectly. However, people in the secular world are naïve to believe they can see all there is to life. They are naïve to think their ability to measure and explain the physical world precludes the existence of something more: something far bigger and unseen.
Personally, when I look at the complexity of this world, it’s easy for me to put faith in a Grand Designer. Too many interrelated parts have to be in perfect relationship for this to have all come about by accident.
Also, when I think about the empty tomb (as we talked about at Easter last week), I am shown exactly where the line between the seen and the unseen lies – Jesus bounced back and forth between the two after His resurrection.
Finally, because of my personal experiences and conversations with others, my faith has grown, and I am confident the Spirit of God resides inside me. This isn’t an empty statement I have to make because I’m a pastor and this is what the Bible says. I have experienced it! I’ve taken the trust fall, and I was caught! After each new experience, my assurance that God is real and that His Spirit lives in me grows more and more.
Does all this mean I never have doubts? Nope. Does it mean my faith gives me an answer for every question I have for God? Nope. There is still a lot that happens in this world that I don’t understand; but because of all the micro-transactions, all the faith-building moments in my life, I can stand firm on my belief that God is good and loving and all-powerful. I trust that one day when I do learn the answers, I will be completely satisfied.
That is my hope for each one of you as well. We walk this earth with all sorts of questions, with all sorts of struggles; but I want each of you to think about all the ways God has shown Himself to you through tiny unseen glimpses. Remember the moments where you felt His presence. Remember the ways He has provided. May those moments build your faith. May we be a family who encourages one another grow in our faith. “For we live by faith and not by sight” because our faith in the unseen is what will lead us to the eternal.
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