A Parting Shot ...

... at Hebrews 11, from the pen of David Gooding:

Faith makes you sure that the future things you hope for--and therefore by definition do not yet possess--are really yours, so that you learn to count on them as if you already had them.

Some things are invisible, either because that is their nature, or because they are as yet hidden in the future. Faith brings us conviction that they are real so that we count them as certainties and base our choices and decisions on them and guide our lives by them.

That's how the godly men and women of a past age lived. That's how we must live too.

You are so used to exercising faith that you would be startled if you were to sit down and think how many things you reckon with as realities, solely by faith.

You believe implicitly, don't you, that Christ is coming again? He isn't here yet!

You believe He is in heaven, but you have never seen Him there!

You believe that He prays for you every day, but you have never heard Him.

You stake everything on His sacrifice, but you were not there to see it.

And how do you know He is risen again?

Yes, you have become so used to exercising faith that these things have become an integral part of your daily life. Having believed them, you have found that they are real and stand the test of experience.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, conviction about things unseen.

(David Gooding, An Unshakeable Kingdom: The Letter of Hebrews for Today)