Faith That Walks

If you’ve ever had someone ask you, “Are you a person of faith?” —
you might have felt like they were giving you a quiz.

The implication is often, Do you believe the right things?
Do you agree to the right set of statements about God, Jesus, the Bible?

That’s a pretty common assumption in our culture:
that “faith” is mostly about what happens between your ears —
intellectual assent to doctrine.
It’s like a theological multiple-choice test,
and if you pick the right answers, you pass.

But the readings we just heard give us a very different picture.
In Genesis, Abram is told to look up at the stars —
countless points of light in the night sky —
and to believe that, even in his childless old age,
he will have descendants as numerous as those stars.

Genesis doesn’t say Abram nodded and said,
“I agree with the proposition that this will happen.”
It says, “He believed the Lord.”

In Hebrew, the word we translate “believed” means
to lean your whole weight onto something solid — to trust it will hold you —
the way a child rests in a parent’s arms
or a traveler steps onto a bridge without testing every plank.

Abram trusted God enough to stake his future on God’s promise.
That’s what faith looks like here:
an active leaning into God’s word,
even when the evidence in front of you seems to point the other way.

Hebrews takes Abram’s story and draws the line forward.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,
the conviction of things not seen.”
Faith here isn’t about having a perfect mental picture of the outcome.
It’s structuring your days so that your life itself says, “God can be trusted.”

Abraham and Sarah “set out,”
Hebrews says, “not knowing where they were going.”
They weren’t given GPS directions. No street address.
Just a promise.
And they stepped out anyway.

Imagine that —
leaving your home, your networks, your familiar routines,
with no more than a word from God to guide you.
That’s faith:
movement in response to a promise,
without the security of seeing the whole map.

And then, in our gospel reading, Jesus says,
“Do not be afraid, little flock.”
He tells his disciples to be ready —
like people waiting for their master to return home —
not fearful, but alert, prepared, awake.

Here again, faith is not standing still with your eyes closed,
hoping it all works out.
Faith is readiness.
It’s being in a posture where,
when the moment comes, you can act in trust.

Let’s pause here, because many of us think of “faith”
as something you either have or you don’t —
like a possession you can put in a box and keep safe.
But in scripture, faith is more like a muscle.
It grows as you use it.
It gets stronger the more you practice trust.

And notice this:
the opposite of biblical faith is not doubt — it’s fear.
Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”
God says to Abram, “Do not be afraid, I am your shield.”
Fear freezes us.
But faith moves, even when the path is unclear.

And here’s something else:
the kind of faith we’re talking about can’t be reduced to
“believing hard enough” so that things go our way.

Abram and Sarah trusted God
and still faced famine, danger, disappointment.
The heroes in Hebrews
“died in faith without having received the promises” —
but they saw them and greeted them from afar.

Faith doesn’t mean getting the outcome you want;
it means living as if God’s promise is trustworthy, come what may.

Let me give you an image.
Think of someone learning to sail.
You can study diagrams, memorize sailing terms, learn the parts of the boat.

But at some point, you have to untie from the dock.
You have to feel the wind in the sail,
learn how the boat responds,
adjust to the shifting water.

You’ll never learn that from the safety of the shore.

Faith is like that.
You can study the Bible, learn the creeds, memorize the catechism —
and those are good things —
but at some point you have to step out, to risk,
to respond to God’s leading in real life.

That’s where faith grows:
in the practice of trusting God in the concrete details of our lives —
in relationships, in the risks we take for love’s sake,
in decisions where the outcome isn’t guaranteed.

So what might that look like this week?

It might be speaking up for someone who has no voice,
not because you know it will fix everything,
but because you trust God’s call to justice.

It might be making a choice that aligns with your deepest values,
even if it costs you something.

It might be offering forgiveness,
stepping into an unknown future,
or simply saying “yes” to the next right thing
you sense God nudging you toward.

I keep coming back to that image of Abram
under a vast night sky, stars blazing overhead,
and God’s promise ringing in his ears.

The night sky is full of what we can’t count, can’t measure, can’t control —
and yet it is also full of beauty and quiet assurance.

Maybe faith begins for us when we stand in our own “night sky” moments —
when we can’t see how the promise will unfold —
and still say, “Alright, God. I’m with you. Let’s go.”

That’s not blind faith.
That’s faith with eyes wide open —
eyes open to the One who calls us forward,
not because we’ve got the map,
but because we’ve learned to trust the Guide.

Faith grows every time we choose trust over fear,
every time we take a step into the unknown
because we believe God walks with us.

Keep walking. Keep trusting.
And do not be afraid, little flock.

The One who offered the promise
is already at work bringing it to fruition.
So step into that work with courage, with joy.

It is there you will find faith,
because there faith will find you.

Amen.