625 Walk By Faith - 2 Corinthians 5:7

What does it mean to walk by faith and not by sight? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again on the Follower of One Podcast.

Today, I just want to reflect a little bit on second Corinthians 5:7 "For we walk by faith, not by sight." The apostle Paul is actually defending himself a little bit to the people of Corinth.

And he's pointing out that walking by faith, instead of walking by sight, makes him do things differently. He does things differently than what the Corinthians would have expected of him. Today on our Marketplace Mission Trip, we're talking about our fourth daily activity, which is Serving Others. Serving Others is an act of walking by faith.

Most of what we see in the world is "Go for all the gusto!" "Grab all you can." "Get everything that you can. But Jesus said that He came to serve not to be served. We're challenged as followers of Jesus, to live by faith; to trust that going out of our way to serve someone else is the most direct route to success, to getting ahead.

We often don't see that in our world. The site that we see is, "Let's manipulate the stock market." "Let's do things to get ahead in the world." "It's our job to bring things to ourselves". 

But in Jesus's economy, when we serve other people, we get outside of that calling and our response is to serve others. And that's why I chose this verse today while talking about serving others. Walking by faith requires us to do things that look silly to the naked eye.

When you see the stock market is having trouble or when problems are going on, can you trust Jesus? Can you trust him when things are very difficult?  We broke the world and bad things happen, but we do have a promise from God that He will cause everything to work together for good, to those who love Him and who are called according to his purpose.

So as we try and follow him, even the bad things that happen, we can receive those as part of his strategy, as part of his plan. He will make them work out for good. 

So as we talk about what it means to walk by faith, let's trust Him and do what He says. Let's get outside of our job description and serve others.

Let's also do things we know are true, that we know are right. Let's avoid gossip and give people the benefit of the doubt. Let's think best of others and look for ways to be a blessing to others. And for the hard things that happen, let's adopt that "So Be It" mentality that I mentioned from my friend, Jim Lange's book, if you didn't hear me talking about that earlier, he wrote a book, Calming the Storm Within, by Jim Lange.

And he talks about being a, "So Be It" Christian, being someone who can look at their circumstances and say, "Okay, God, this is the lot you've given me today. What do you want me to do?" I'm trying to adopt being more of a, So Be It Christian. And I think that's part of walking by faith. 

Today, let's walk by faith. Ask God to show you how you can serve the people around you; how you can get outside of your job description because you trust Jesus. You want to serve other people and let Jesus do the work. Jesus can make our lives are better, both in this world and the next, and he calls us to serve other people.

So today that's our Marketplace Mission Trip activity, and it's one way to walk by faith and not by sight. Thank you for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for stretching your faith to make a difference in the world. When we live, like we follow Jesus, other people will ask. And we'll get an opportunity to talk more about Jesus, to other people because we live differently.

Thanks for being a marketplace minister. And thanks for making a difference in the lives of your friends. Check out https://followerofone.org and join our online community and become part of a body of people who are trying to do the very same thing; we're trying to live our lives, glorifying. God. Thanks very much.