Walking by Faith, Not by Sight
Today’s devotional
Strength for today does not provide a complete view of tomorrow. You may feel ready to make a necessary decision and still wonder where it will lead. Will the work continue? Will the person receive your help? Will the sacrifice make sense? Trust can live alongside questions that remain genuinely unanswered.
Paul’s language about walking by faith belongs within his hope of resurrection and life with the Lord. He knows the strain of mortal existence and looks toward what God has promised in Christ. The unseen future he trusts is larger than the success of a particular undertaking or the approval of a community.
That distinction makes hope more durable. A project may fail, a responsibility may end, and a relationship may remain strained. We should learn from those realities and respond to any harm. The risen Christ remains faithful through outcomes we cannot turn into reassuring stories. Our ultimate hope does not depend on making every circumstance explain itself.
Paul’s comparison between present affliction and eternal glory should never become a reason to minimize another person’s pain. He has already named pressure, perplexity, and suffering. Resurrection hope allows us to tell the truth about grief because the present does not have to supply its own complete redemption.
Consider the next step that love and wisdom make reasonably clear. Seek counsel, attend to the evidence, and act without pretending that you can see the entire road. You can also accompany someone whose horizon has narrowed to the next day. Shared hope may take the form of listening, practical help, or a quiet prayer offered while the larger future remains in God’s hands.
Adapted from Chapter 10: Walking by Faith, Not by Sight in The Courage to Continue by Dr. R. C. Titus.
Read the Scripture
Open each passage and read slowly. Notice what these words reveal about God and the life before you.
2 Corinthians 4:14-18 · WEBU
14knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also through Jesus, and will present us with you.
15For all things are for your sakes, that the grace, being multiplied through the many, may cause the thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.
16Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward person is decaying, yet our inward person is renewed day by day.
17For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory,
18while we don’t look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 5:1-7 · WEBU
1For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.
2For most certainly in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven,
3if indeed being clothed, we will not be found naked.
4For indeed we who are in this tent do groan, being burdened, not that we desire to be unclothed, but that we desire to be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
5Now he who made us for this very thing is God, who also gave to us the down payment of the Spirit.
6Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;
7for we walk by faith, not by sight.
Pause and respond
For reflection
What next step is clear enough to take even though the larger outcome remains unknown?
A practice for today
Identify one decision that needs action and one uncertainty that cannot yet be resolved. Seek appropriate counsel, choose the next responsible step, and leave room to revise as circumstances become clearer.
A prayer
Risen Christ, hold the future I cannot see. Help me face the present truthfully and act with wisdom where a step is needed. Keep hope from becoming a demand for easy explanations. Give me courage to trust your promised life and offer companionship within today’s uncertainty. Amen.
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