“Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen” (Hebrews 11:1-3).

How do you see things in your life? Do you look at life through your eyes or through God’s eyes? Did you know that we can use God’s eyes to see instead of being limited by our own sight? When we don’t mix faith with our sight, then we can become vulnerable to the lies of Satan. So, as Christians, we are commanded in the Word of God to walk by faith and not by sight. Our human senses are limited in that we can only see the facts and not the truth that might lie just beneath the surface of any given situation.

One of the repercussions of sin is spiritual blindness. It caused man to no longer see as God sees; he now sees through the eyes of his own limitations. So when sin or our fallen nature got us in a pit where there seemed to be no way to escape, Satan could convince us that we were at his mercy as long as we obeyed him. But God, through Jesus, saved us from the pit of sin and despair. The writer of Hebrews gives us a very powerful insight into one of the purposes of faith in a Christian’s life. Faith in God and His Word gives us the ability to understand God’s ways.

Have you ever wondered why we choose to commit sin when faced with certain decisions instead of choosing the path of righteousness? When people don’t include faith in their decisions, when faced with seemingly impossible or very painful decisions, unbelief will cause them to feel abandoned in their problems. As a result of the isolation, some will give up all hope and agree with the enemy’s lies . . . as Eve did when the serpent lied to her. They’re walking in the darkness of sin, instead of the light of truth.

We all have a choice to make today. We can choose to live our lives on the basis of how we perceive them to be, or we can look to the Lord and allow Him to show us the path that we should choose. It requires faith and trust to allow God to direct our footsteps in life. But if we will allow Him, He will lead us on a path of victory and freedom. No longer will you have to live your life in bondage to fear or the lies of the enemy. Let me leave you with a final thought: “Now the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites. No one was allowed to go out or in. But the Lord said to Joshua, ‘I have given you Jericho, its king, and all its strong warriors'” (Joshua 6 :1-3).

Why did the Lord instruct a man who had sight, to see? Joshua’s sight with his eyes was fine, but it was how he viewed the situation that God corrected. The Lord told Joshua to see, and then He told him what to look for. Joshua was looking through the eyes of defeat, because Moses was dead and Joshua was intimidated by the elders of Israel. He was overwhelmed by the duty of leading this great nation of people over into the Promised Land.

So God had to capture Joshua’s attention from seeing things through the eyes of the past; He instructed Joshua on how to see through faith in His Word. God didn’t change Joshua’s sight, but God’s Words changed the way Joshua perceived the situation to be in the natural . . . and his faith in God gave him the strength to take the land. Joshua saw himself as a victim or inadequate for the job, but God revealed the truth to him. His own perception kept him from seeing victory in the natural. Faith will change our perception, but we must first place our trust in the Lord and listen to His voice—not our own.

—submitted by Asa Dockery, US