Faith is absolutely necessary in order for anyone to have a relationship with God and for any degree of spirituality. This is because faith is how we are able to interact with anything which exists beyond the plane of the physical and created world. The spiritual and unseen realities cannot be known through our earthly senses, but can be seen and touched through faith and love. Without these virtues, we will be restricted to knowing only earthly things, which are passing away, rather than being able to lift our minds to set them on “things above” (Colossians 3:2).
Too often faith is misunderstood and misrepresented, especially by those who are critical or doubtful of it, as the unreasonable determination to believe things that are contrary to reason or evidence. For some, religious faith as a kind of willful ignorance contrary to what we know. However, this idea sees faith primarily as holding a set of beliefs about things, beliefs cannot be verified through the physical senses, and are therefore suspect.
In stark contrast, Christian faith is not mainly about believing certain things to be true or factual. Instead, faith is about trusting and relying on the undergirding reality of the spiritual realm, from which the physical world comes and on which it also depends. The substantive and eternal is what is unseen to human eyes, while the universe, which owes its existence to the unseen, is temporary and impermanent.
Faith is primarily about trust, and this trust is the courageous willingness to let God be God. Jesus rarely speaks of courage. On only a few occasions does he tell people to “take courage” (Matthew 9:2, 22, 14:27, Mark 6:50, John 16:33). However, we ought to recognize that every mention of faith and belief, which involves the humble admission that we are insufficient in ourselves and must turn to trust God, is an act of profound courage. From this perspective, Jesus is always talking about courage, and a very particular form involving trust in God. To let God be the God of wisdom, perfect will, and loving power, means abandoning any insistence on our preferences for how things ought to be. We submit to and rely on God’s will, trusting that what we do not understand nor want, may be exactly what will draw us into union with God. This is how faith is related to courage. In faith we find the boldness to risk, trust, attempt to follow with hope, and let go of what we want.
The challenging reality is that it is far harder to trust God to do whatever he wills than to expect God to act in ways pleasing to us. Little faith or courage is required to trust if we think we will get what we want. But real courage and faith is not trusting in a particular outcome, but in whatever God may do. Since the whole creation is his, God graciously works through all of it in whatever manner he chooses, in ways that seem to be ordinary to us and may not notice, or in ways we cannot explain at al and call miracles. These extraordinary examples are not the only times God works, though they may be the most astounding.
Living by faith is taking the unseen spiritual realities to be of greater value and importance through our trust in God. All the intangibles, such as joy, peace, love, and hope, are only found through a spiritual life which is fundamentally based on courageous faith.