The audio cuts out sometimes in this voice note, but hopefully it works. Here is the transcript:

Hi, I’m Lisa. Thank you for listening. I’ve started posting voice voice notes on here.

I really hope that you can hear them. I’m having a flare-up of eosinophilic esophagitis and I’ve lost my voice. I’m going to be posting a transcript also with this voice recording so hopefully you can hear me.

It’s a lot easier to talk than to try and write out a post. So I wanted to go ahead and start doing these voice recordings

hopefully soon, I’ll have my voice again, and then I’ll be able to post that. So yesterday, I was posting about the name of the website. It’s Learning to Live by Faith.

And I was talking about what faith means. So I was going to talk some more about that today. Yesterday I was saying that.

Charles Spurgeon defines faith as believing that Jesus Christ is who he says he is, and that he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do.

And there are many definitions of faith, many ways to look at it. You may have heard Hebrews 11:1 that says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” And

I was going to be talking about that today. Spurgeon talks about faith as being the eye of the soul. So, There’s the realm that we live in, the visible realm, the world we see around us with our physical eyes.

And then there’s that invisible spiritual realm that we see with an eye of faith.

So With our physical eye, we can look around. We see creation. We see trees. We see houses. We see people. We can hear other people talking.

The world that’s invisible to us now is the spirit world.

We can’t see God or we can’t hear Him talking to us.

There were times in the Bible where people hear the voice of God outside of their head, like they heard him talking to them.

we can’t see God and we hear God if we hear god talking to us it’s usually talking in our hearts  he’ll give us a sense of what he’s saying So we can’t see God and we can’t see the angels or demons. We can’t see the spiritual realm. so

And we can’t see heaven. That’s another thing. The New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, we can’t see it.

But As I was talking about yesterday, the Spurgeon says the three elements of faith are knowledge, belief, and trust. So we’ve…You have to hear about something to have knowledge of it. So we’ve heard of the things of God. We’ve heard of heaven. And…Christians believe that to be true, so we take that next step of believing that it’s true, and then the next step of putting our trust in it. So We’re believing that it’s there.

So we have the hope that we’re going to get to go to heaven by grace, by saving faith in Jesus. And we believe that heaven’s there, that we just can’t see it with our physical eyes.

It’s not visible to us right now, but it exists. It’s there. And so we see it with an eye of faith. So that’s…

That verse Hebrews about how faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Uh in one.

sermon, one Spurgeon sermon. I can’t remember exactly what sermon it was, and that’s part of why I want to go ahead and start posting voice notes about what I’m studying that day because then I can be sure to be able to find where I read it and be able to reference it.

But I think it was a Spurgeon sermon. He was giving an example about how With faith, we’re connecting to things that are there. We just can’t see them. so he used the example of, like, if you were in a dark room, and there was a chair in the room, but the lights are off, you can’t see the chair but it’s there, it exists. Like, if you shine a flashlight on it, you see it. But it was there the whole time. You just couldn’t see it until that light was shined on That’s what it is with heaven. That it’s there. It’s real. God’s real. The angels are real. The spiritual realm is real. We just can’t see it…Until we’re there.

After death, when you go to heaven, then you’ll be able to see everything. We’ll see God face to face. We’ll see everybody that’s there in heaven. And we’ll…

be able to see and hear them, talk to them. Right now, it’s invisible to us.

So it’s important to think of it that way…that, you know…as in…

I’m going to be talking on here about meditating and when you’re meditating You’re supposed to hold an image in your mind. You focus on that image while you’re meditating. And as Christians we can use imagery from the Bible.

And it’s important to know that you’re not using your imagination. You’re not…creating something in your mind you’re connecting to what’s there you’re seeing it with an eye of faith um Now, at the same time, we can only, we can’t comprehend what it looks like.

So in that sense, I mean, it’s beyond our imagination. We can’t really even imagine what it looks like. You’re just…knowing that something is there that you can’t see…and you’re waiting to see what it looks like. You’re trying to connect to a sense of it.

And that’s important. That can get your mind working the right way if you know it’s there. There’s just a veil in between us and heaven right now.

It’s a different veil than what’s talked about when the veil was torn in the temple. It just veils it from our sight.

So, it’s important to think of it that way. You’re connecting to what’s real. It’s there. We’re waiting for it.

so faith is believing that Jesus is who he said he is and that he’s going to do what he said he was going to do. So what is it that we’re putting our faith in? we’re putting our faith in the promises of God. that we’re going to be saved and we get to go to heaven.

And that’s one thing to remember that our reward, we…don’t have it fully yet we’re not in heaven yet we’re waiting so we’re here one imagery that’s really helpful I can’t remember exactly which commentary I read it in, but it was saying that.

Earth is our temporary home. Heaven’s our permanent home. So, when we’re on Earth, It’s like being in a waiting room or in the lobby for heaven. The main event is that we get to go to heaven.

God’s kingdom is not of this world. So it makes me think of if like you’re in the lobby of a theater or something, you know, you’re waiting for the [the audio cuts out here] scenery and everything curtain, and you’re waiting for the curtain to be pulled away and then you see what’s there. [the audio cut out a little bit here] what I’m looking for. … We’re waiting.to see what our reward looks like, and it’s beyond our comprehension, but we can spend time thinking about it.

So faith is the eye of the soul. It’s assurance about what we do not see. But how do we know what we’re trying to connect to…what we’re trying to see? So That gets into talking about two types of revelation. You have general revelation and special revelation.

So general revelation is creation when you look around.

If your verse, Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

So we look around at the world around us. God’s attributes are displayed in his creation. When Christians look around, we see A world that God lovingly created for us as an habitation for man to be in communion with him.

And then special revelation is God’s word. It’s the Bible. And in that, he tells us who he is. That’s how we know his name. we learn about His plan of salvation. And with the Bible, we’re going to God. And we’re seeing who he’s told us he is. What we have to be careful about is making him without realizing it, making up ideas of God. That’s what I did when I was little. That’s what I was talking about some yesterday.

that without realizing it, I had made up ideas of God that were not the full revelation of him that you could get from the scriptures. So that’s why I was getting confused and That’s why if you’re looking for answers, then you can go to the scriptures and learn about who God’s told us that he is.

So, as I’ve been talking about on here when I was growing up, I hadn’t really read the Bible much. I had a children’s Bible. I had read that. I had read through The book of Proverbs. I had gotten that. Someone had given me a book of the Proverbs. I had read through that. And I grew up going to church.

but I had had that experience of I thought I was doing things right I believed that God would answer me that he could help me and then things didn’t change. A lot of stuff was going on. I knew that God loved me, but you were I was confused about how everything was going. And God was leading me to start studying the Bible.

So again, without realizing it, and it might be, you know, You might have had, you know, I think a lot of people have this idea about God that he’s someone to call on in a time of help.

So I had thought of him as like a helpline. And that’s not all the way wrong, it’s just not the most accurate way to see him.

He’s more than that. Where you call on him and help. Call on him in a time of need for help.

There have been times where there have been things going on. I hadn’t gotten an answer.

I think I had the idea that, you know, if you went to church and you were praying, following God then he would answer you and certain things wouldn’t happen you know and I think we all kind of get stuck in that thought that you can see like This would be another thing to talk about. But in the book of Job, Job’s friends were thinking good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people. And…So, if you had things going on, um, And these are things I continue to struggle with even after studying the Bible and after I’ve gotten sick and going through an illness and everything. But we think that…

So that’s where I was. I knew that God loved me and I knew he would have the answers, but that’s where the confusion was.

And so there was one time that I was calling out to God about some things. And didn’t you hear what I said was happening? And it was like God answered, well, did you hear what I said? So I was asking him, did you hear what I said was going on here? And he said, didn’t you hear what I said to expect out of this life? And I was thinking, well, no. And A.W. Tozer talks about this a lot in his Sermons and Books and Martin Lloyd-Jones. They both preached in the 20th century in the 1900s. And Christians are not taught to have the right expectations of this life, that we’re living in a fallen world. so…we get the wrong expectations and then that’s where you can have you can really be struggling so that’s something that we’ll talk about over time. It’s that they talk about in the older commentaries too, that we live in a fallen world. So things don’t always happen as they should in terms of right and wrong.

There are right things that happen and there are wrong things that happen. So remember the world was created perfect.

There was no sin and then once sin entered into the world, it brought destruction and death with.

There’s going to be injustices. Things are not always going to go as they should.

Until the end. And then at the end, there’s the day of renewal. Everything will be set right. And forever in heaven we’ll be at

be a perfect peace and rest. So in the Christian life, you suffer in this world. And then you never suffer again in heaven. So…

When I started studying the Bible, which is the special revelation, that’s where God teaches you.

And I’ve written about it some on here. He teaches you that he works through afflictions. there’s a verse that says, it is through much tribulation that you enter the kingdom of heaven.

And then, again, then you’re at perfect peace and rest. There’s a lot of hymns that talk about it. Be still, my soul is one. At the end of the…I can’t remember which verse it is, but it says, through thorny ways leads to a joyous end.

So there’s thorns on this life, there’s thorns on the pathway, and then it opens up into eternal day. Where there’s no suffering. You’ll never suffer again. There’s nothing painful. And.

Jesus is the good shepherd. He leads you on that pathway home. So, while we’re in a fallen world and things don’t always happen as they should in terms of right and wrong, but God’s sovereign over everything that happens. He has a loving plan for your life. He’s watching over you. Nothing’s ever outside of God’s control. There’s always a purpose in the things that are happening, and we can seek Him about that.

One thing to know too is that a lot of God’s purposes are hidden. There’s a verse that says, now we know in part.

In this life, now we know in part, then we will know fully even as we are fully known. There’s a lot that’s not revealed to us yet.

But both in the general revelation and in the special revelation, in his relationship with us, God reveals enough of who he is to us. So that we know that we can trust him. We know that he’s good. He’s shown us that he’s good. So we put our faith in him. We have a saving faith in him.

We believe that He’s there, and the saving faith is when you repent and believe, and you submit to Him as your Lord, God, Heavenly Father. And you live in obedience to him.

So there’s a story that I think would be helpful to tell about how God was working with me. again, he said it lovingly when he said, when I was saying, did you hear what I said? He was lovingly saying like, Well, we didn’t hear what he had said. Like, the answers were there. And he wanted me to know that the answer was knowing him more.

So this was happening around when I was in fourth or fifth grade. It was sixth grade when I started studying the Bible, I had that one-year Bible that I started reading. And so this happened when I was in about the fifth grade.

We were, this was around the time that the talk had started about that the world might end in the year 2000. And there was a lot of, you know, the things I was hearing were sensationalized and could be very scary. When you were hearing them, not to be left behind, or, you know, didn’t know. You wanted to make sure you were saved. And so there was one Sunday morning, I was at church I had not looked at the bulletin yet. It was just a regular Sunday. It wasn’t a holiday or anything. I had gone to Sunday School on the first floor and then gone up the steps to the second floor and it was one of those times where for some reason You turn the corner and there’s like nobody around. It’s just me. And I heard someone walking up the steps.

that I had just walked up. I looked to see who it was, so they’re walking up from the first floor. It’s a dark hallway. a kind of narrow staircase, and I looked, and it looked like it was Jesus walking up the steps. He was taking a few more steps. I was like, that really looks like Jesus. And I…

uh had that i felt very scared i thought what’s happening the first thing you think when you think you see Jesus standing there is that you’re getting ready to die. So he kept walking towards me, and I thought, okay, what am I going to say, what’s he going to say?He got to the top of the stairs And he just walked down the hallway without saying anything and had this really, you know,bad feeling when that happened. I thought, oh no, he just walked right past me. And at the same time, I had that feeling of like, this can’t be right.

And I watched him, he kept walking down the hall, and somebody in one of the classrooms called out and said, oh, oh, hi, Gary. Oh, are you playing Jesus today? I didn’t realize that. And I was like, oh, okay, so see, it wasn’t Jesus. I didn’t realize we had only been going to that church for a little while, and I didn’t realize they had somebody that really, really…

it looks like Jesus when he puts on the robe and he was walking around by himself. Um, so I thought, oh, I guess that wasn’t him. Well,And I felt such a feeling of relief. I knew that couldn’t be right. Because…I knew Jesus loved me. I knew I had believed in him. But it was that was what was going on at that time. I was afraid you were going to be left behind.

So God kept bringing that to my mind over the years, like when leading up to studying the Bible there, when I would be struggling with a question.

He would say, remember, you know, how you thought that was me and then it wasn’t me.

And that’s how he was working with me, that, like, I had these ideas of God that weren’t all the way accurate, and that that was the problem. If you draw closer to him.

you’ll see who he really is. And that’s what’s happened over the years, and that’s what I’m going to be talking about on here

And I’ll stop today with one more thing to say today is that

When you’re thinking about what faith is, it’s believing in what you can’t see now.

But faith is only necessary in this life because, again, when we’re in heaven, we’ll be able to see everything.

That’s what it means that faith becomes sight. So there’s a verse, it’s 1 Corinthians 13:13

That says, “And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” And if you look at the commentaries on that verse, it might have been Matthew Henry that was saying, why is it said that the greatest is love? It might be because love will be there forever. Love remains forever. Um, Faith and hope are only necessary in this life, in your earthly life, because once you get to heaven, your faith becomes sight and your hope is realized.

So that’s an interesting thing to remember that it helps you remember what faith is. It’s Your sight for the invisible world now. It’s the way you see what you can’t see now. Let me try and say that again. Faith is the eye of the soul. It’s the way that you see the unseen. Now, we see what we’re waiting for with an eye of faith. And then once we get there, our faith will become sight. So that’s one way to help remember.

What is it? What are we doing? We’re trying to connect to that unseen world, which is our reward, and that’s where we’re getting to go.

So thank you for listening. I really hope that you can hear what I’m saying. And I’ll post a transcript with it too. and

Hopefully this works and I’ll keep posting on here about what I’ve been studying. Thanks