We are in the middle of a war! Faith is described as a “fight” in I Timothy 6:12, or a “contest” in some translations. The Greek word is agonizomai, from which you can readily see that we have borrowed the word in the English language as “agonizing”. Every fight, every contest, has a friend and a foe.
Every step of faith will be subject to challenge. The grassroots foe of my faith is unbelief, but it takes many forms, and perhaps the most common is that of appearances.
Faith is concerned with the unseen, unbelief with the seen. Faith calls those things which be not as though they were (Romans 4:17); unbelief says, “Except I shall see… I will not believe” (John 20:25). In Hebrews 11, Abraham is given as an example of faith that transcends what is seen in the material.
Abraham was called to go out into the unknown and receive the inheritance (verses 8-10). So he left the city, with its prosperous living, and dwelt in tents in the land promised to him. He kept his faith firm in the promise of “a city… whose builder and maker is God”. He could have become negative while roughing it in a tent, but he didn’t. Unbelief sees the tent; faith sees the city.
Abraham was also: promised that he would be the father of a nation, yet he had no children. The promise was given to him when he was 75 years old! He believed it for some years, but he kept getting older (appearances!). His wife decided to “help” God fulfill the promise, and allowed Abraham to have a child by their maid, Hagar, when he was 86. God told him that the baby was not the promised child, and repeated the promise to him — without a date. Finally, Abraham was 100 years old when baby Isaac was born. “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but’ was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:20,21). God performed the miracle when it was totally impossible according to appearances. (Read the full story in Genesis 15:1-6; 17:4-5; 21;1-8; Romans 4:17-21.) It is always the unseen versus appearances; faith versus unbelief.
A further example of the foe of appearances is seen in the record of the feeding of the 5,000 plus in John 6:5-14. The disciples felt a need to provide food for the multitude who had followed Jesus into a barren area. So they searched for food, and Andrew came back with the news of five loaves and two fishes, “but what are they among so many?” (verse 9). To Andrew these items were a symbol of lack; to Jesus they were a symbol of abundance. It is appearances versus the unseen again. Jesus issued instructions to get the people ready to receive — that’s faith! Later, He shared with the disciples the principle: “Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24), that is, judge a situation according to spiritual values and not your own.
One further illustration of the foe of appearances is seen in the record of the stilling of the storm in Luke 8:22-25. Jesus had said, “Let us go over unto the other side” (verse 22). That was His will and so He got into the boat and fell asleep. However, a sudden storm came up, the boat took on water, and they woke Jesus up and asked Him to do something. Even with Jesus on board, you cannot stop the storms of life coming your way! He simply said, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39) and the winds ceased. He then turned to the disciples and asked, “Where is your faith?” (Luke 8:25). Instead of their faith being in His word to “go over”, they believed in the appearances that they were about to “go under”!
How do we make this practical? Let Paul have the last word: “I have learnt to be independent of circumstances” (Philippians 4:11, 20th Century N.T.). We can learn that too! Circumstances have no more power over us than we allow them to have. If the appearances are contrary to faith, then take your mind off appearances and get them on the end result of your faith. It’s a “good fight of faith” — for we are more than conquerors.
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