Making Faith Seen

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. 

— Matthew 5:14-16 (LSB)¹

If faith, which is invisible, was somehow made visible, what would it look like? What form would it take? What would it say? How would it act?

We can begin to find the answer to all these questions in the answer to yet another question: if God was a word, what word would He be? John 1:1-4 (ESV) gives us the answer: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

How mysterious, you might say. And it is. Many words don’t make sense until they’re enfleshed. “You know how you may have words for something, but you don’t yet know the meaning of those words until you incarnate them? Some words only gain meaning when they have skin on.”²  How true.

The same is true of this Word. John 1:14 (ESV) goes on to say that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. . .” Jesus came and walked the earth as God’s Living Word, revealing just what the Father is like, manifested in a human form that those around could see and touch. He made known life as God would live it—perfectly. Then He died and rose again and ascended to heaven, leaving His disciples with a message to spread around the world. But how? Now that Jesus is gone, how are we to spread the word?

Jesus didn’t leave His disciples with a message alone. He also gave them a calling and a promise. He called them to be His body, the visible representation of God in the world, and He promised to send the Holy Spirit to fill them and empower them for this task. 

Following in the footsteps of those first disciples, we are God’s living words in the world (“living” not in the sense that we have life in and of ourselves, because we don’t, but in the sense that the Spirit of life dwells within us). When the world wonders what faith, hope, and love look like, they watch us, His body. When others want to know what God would say, they ask us, and we tell them His Word. 

It is our high calling, immense privilege, and grave responsibility to make God seen in this world as His body on earth. How well we carry out this daunting task is determined by the extent to which we cast ourselves on God’s enabling grace and unfailing mercy. Only He can provide the strength we need to reflect a true portrait of Him.

love letters

We are God’s letters of love to the world. Paul wrote to the church of Corinth, “You show that you are Christ’s letter, delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3 CSB). True love is something the world knows little of. Many people have only caught brief glimpses or heard faint whispers of what love can be, but to see it expressed plainly and hear it spoken clearly, they must look and listen to those whom God has chosen to show His love to the world. As Mark Harris writes, 

The world has heard our message for thousands of years, but in this age of skepticism, they must be able to see it as well. As we live out the  pages of our lives, can they see in us a love that  never fails? They have heard the word love used and abused, but can they see the reality of love in the way we, as followers of Christ, live our lives? As we surrender our lives to Christ, ‘the author and perfecter of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:2 NIV), he will write his message of love and hope on our hearts for all to read  and believe.³ 

What is the story others see lived out in our lives? Is it a story of attempted perfection, or is it a story of real and true redemption? Grace doesn’t mean anything to you if you’ve never failed. Believers should realize that they fail and fall short on a regular basis—that’s why we need grace! 

When we fail, do others see us reaching for the Savior we proclaim, or do they see us trying to rely on our own ability? Living out your faith authentically doesn’t mean living a life of perfection. If you could do that on your own, you wouldn’t need salvation. No, living out your faith means letting your life reveal that you need—and have—a Savior, and that you’re relying on Him each day for the grace you need to live a life that pleases Him.

It should be plain to all who see that God is the Author of our story. Only He could use us through our weaknesses and in spite of our strengths. Only He could take our mistakes and use them as part of His masterpiece. Only He could use ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

Only He could make Himself seen through the lives of people like you and me.

what we reveal

To make You known / To make You seen / To be Your hands and to be Your feet / Oh I want to be a revelation of love / I, I want to make the invisible God―visible

— Mark Harris, “Visible”

The power of a good story is found in portraying a theme of truth in such a way that it is made alive to those who read or hear it. It’s the same with the story of our lives. 

What is the truth our lives portray? Is the faith we profess the same faith we practice? Our lives reveal what we truly believe. “Just as the truth an author believes will seep into the stories they write, the truth we speak and say we believe should seep into the way we live. Our lives should manifest the ‘sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him,’ like the smell of spring to the watching world. (2 Corinthians 2:14) We should live out the gospel through the beauty of loving, sacrificial words and actions. The truth is to transform every aspect of our lives,” writes Katherine Forster.⁴ 

If we want to know what we really believe, all we have to do is look at our lives, because what we believe is what we will be living. We are constantly revealing what we hold to as truth and what we cling to in love, the thoughts of our minds and the hopes of our hearts, the things we long for and the principles we live by. 

When we look at our lives, what do we see? Is there evidence of the Spirit’s saving work? Does the mirror show a reflection of the image of God?

how are we doing?

What we reveal matters; so does the way we show forth our faith. Dr. Paul Brand notes,

We are to carry the aroma of Christ to the world. It is a life-giving essence of all that Christ means to us and can mean to others. We have the responsibility of passing it on. The way we do it is of critical importance. The apostle [Paul] felt the responsibility was severe. ‘Who is equal to such a task?’ he asks. It is true that people have been turned away from the gospel by the behavior of those who profess the name and aroma of Christ. We need to be faithful carriers of the fragrance, lest it become for some the smell of death.⁵

How are we as the church doing at this? Not very well, I fear. The Sunday morning performance may be impressive (or it may not), but what about the rest of the week? And why should we be any different on Sunday in the first place? Perhaps it’s because that is what we have been taught and shown all of our lives. Superficiality and shallowness breeds superficiality and shallowness, and so often that is what characterizes our Sunday morning interactions. It’s easy to fall into and hard to break out of the cast of the Sunday morning show. 

But when the Sunday morning show fails to satisfy (and why should we expect it to?), how can we expect to have anything to draw on to share with others during the rest of the week? It’s little wonder that we can’t figure out how to live out our faith in the world when we barely know how to do so in church.

If we are the body / Why aren’t his arms reaching? / Why aren’t his hands healing? / Why aren’t his words teaching? / And if we are the body / Why aren’t his feet going? / Why is his love not showing them there is a way? / Jesus is the way

     -Mark Hall, “If We Are the Body”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, please hear my heart in this. I am not writing from a standpoint of being above you; I’m beside you, encouraging you and pleading for you to please drop the act and let Christ shine through you as you are regardless of what day of the week it is. All of us—myself included—desperately need it. 

I wonder what would happen if we summoned the courageous faith needed to bring our real selves to the Sunday morning service and live out that same faith all week long. If we dared to believe that we can come as we are (and dared to admit that we are not yet as we should be), we just might see the beginnings of a revolution of grace. 

May authenticity, consistency, and humility be the words that define our lives as we the church let our faith be seen.

---

1.  Legacy Standard Bible ↩︎
2. Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 74-75. ↩︎
3. Mark Harris, excerpt from The Basics of Life by 4HIM, (West Monroe, Louisiana: Howard Publishing Co, Inc., © 1998 Andy Chrisman, Kirk Sullivan, Mark Harris, Marty Magehee), 21. ↩︎
4. Katherine Forster, “Is Fiction Less Important for Christians?” therebelution.com/blog/2023/04/is-fiction-less-important-for- christians/
   ↩︎
5. Dr. Paul Brand, He Satisfies My Soul (Grand Rapids: Discovery House Publishers, 2008), 43. ↩︎