Seeing Is Believing… or Is It?

0:18 So we have a phrase in our culture that sounds completely reasonable, even practical, and I think most of us have said it at some point, maybe even about our own faith. And that phrase is I'll believe it when I see it. We say it when we're skeptical, when we've been disappointed before, when someone makes a promise that sounds a little too good to be true. When we've waited a long time and nothing seems to be moving, we find ourselves saying, I'll believe it when I see it, because that is how we protect ourselves from getting our hopes up again.

1:01 And honestly, it makes a lot of sense. It really does. Except when we bring that same logic into our relationship with God, when we make seeing the prerequisite for believing, something really important shifts. And today, I want to take a look at that shift and what it actually costs us. Welcome to my question for you. I'm Melissa and this is part four of our series called The Language of Faith. Each week we've been slowing down to examine the phrases we reach for in our unscripted moments, the everyday language that reveals what we actually believe about God, not just what we say we believe.

1:54 We started this series with hoping versus wishing, then faith versus optimism. And last week we asked whether being realistic was leading God out of the equation entirely. And today we're asking a question that I think cuts right to the center of what it means to actually trust God is seeing really believing, or is it the other way around?

2:35 Okay, so before we dive into scripture, I just want to sit with this phrase for a second, because I think it's worth understanding why we say it. I'll believe it when I see it is fundamentally a statement about trust. It's saying evidence comes first, proof comes first, results come first, and then and only then will I allow myself to believe. And in so many areas of life, that is genuinely wise. We live in a world where discernment matters, where not everything deserves your full confidence until it's earned.

3:19 I'm not gonna argue with that. But here's the tension. Faith, by its very definition, operates in the space before the evidence arrives. If I only believe something after I've seen it, that's not faith. That's just observation. That's just updating my understanding based on new data. That's something every person on the planet does every single day without any spiritual conviction at all. Faith is a thing that holds on before the evidence arrives. It's the thing that says, I don't have the proof of this yet, and I'm choosing to trust it anyway.

4:05 In Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, which we touched on earlier in this series, it puts it this way. Now, faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Assurance about what we do not see. Not what we have already seen, not what has already been confirmed, but what we do not yet see. So when we say, I'll believe it when I see it, what we're actually saying is I will believe it when it no longer requires faith, which means we're not really talking about faith at all.

4:48 So I want to spend some time with the person in scripture who I think gets misunderstood a lot. And I say that because I think most of us are a lot more like him than we want to admit. We're in uh John chapter 20. Jesus has been crucified. The disciples are behind locked doors, they're grieving, scared, and trying to make sense of everything that just happened. And then the risen Jesus appears to them right there in the room. He speaks to them, he shows them the holes in his hands and in his side, and scripture says the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

5:33 But one of the disciples, Thomas, wasn't there with them. And when the other disciples find him and tell him what happened, Thomas says something that has followed and defined him through 2,000 years of church history. He says, Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. Show me, prove it, then I'll decide. And here's what I want us to notice before we move too quickly past Thomas.

6:16 He's not a villain in this story. He's a man who loved Jesus deeply, who had followed him through years of ministry, who had just watched his rabbi be brutally executed. His doubt is not the doubt of a cold, indifferent skeptic. It's the doubt of someone whose heart had been completely shattered. And I think that matters because a lot of us have said our own version of, I will not believe, from exactly that same place where Thomas was. Not from arrogance, but maybe it was from grief, from exhaustion, from having believed something with everything we had and feeling like it just didn't hold.

7:04 A week later, Jesus comes back. Thomas is there this time, and Jesus doesn't lecture him or shame him in any way. He just says, Here, look, see for yourself. Let's look at John chapter 20, verse 27, where Jesus says, put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. And Thomas responds with one of the most profound declarations in all of the gospels. He says, My Lord and my God.

7:48 Five words, but they hold everything. And then Jesus says something that I want you to hear clearly. In John chapter 20, verse 29, he says, Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus isn't condemning Thomas here. He's not saying Thomas was terrible for needing to see to believe. He meets Thomas exactly where he is, but he is pointing to something. He is naming a different kind of faith.

8:29 It's a faith that doesn't require the wounds to be within arm's reach before it will commit. A faith that holds on in the dark week between the meeting in the locked room and the reappearance of Jesus. It's a faith that says, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm still here. That's the faith he calls blessed. But here's the thing, Thomas is actually the gentler version of this story, because there's another group of people in Scripture who had every reason to believe, who had seen miracle after miracle, and still couldn't stop reaching for proof.

9:10 It's the Israelites in the wilderness. Now, just think about what they had already witnessed with their own eyes before they ever set foot in the desert. They had seen ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, bread appearing on the ground every single morning, and water from a rock. These were not people who had never seen God move. They had seen more of his power firsthand than most of us will ever witness in a lifetime. And yet, every time something new got hard, every time the circumstances shifted or the supply ran low or the pain and the path got uncertain, they went right back to the same place.

10:04 Is God really with us or not? Psalm 95 looks back at this generation and says, Where your ancestors tested me, they tried me, though they had seen what I did. For forty years I was angry with that generation. I said, They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways. They had seen what God did, and still they tested. This is what I call the proof cycle. And I think it's one of the most honest and convicting patterns in all of Scripture, because the wilderness generation didn't lack evidence.

10:48 They were surrounded by it. It was everywhere. They had decades of it. They had seen God's goodness with their own eyes. But evidence alone was never enough to produce lasting trust. Because as soon as the next hard thing arrived, the evidence from the last miracle already felt distant. And the demand for proof started all over again. And if I'm really honest, I see that pattern in myself sometimes. Maybe you do too. God comes through in a real, undeniable way. And for a season, faith feels solid and sure. But then something new gets hard, something shifts, and quietly, without even fully realizing it, we start reaching for proof again.

11:38 Show me, confirm this, give me a sign that you're still in this. Show me that you're still with me, God. The proof cycle isn't always about a lack of history with God. Sometimes it's about what we've decided evidence is actually worth. So here's where I want to flip this. Because scripture doesn't just name the problem, it gives us a different way to walk. Paul writes something in 2 Corinthians that I think is one of the most quietly radical statements in the New Testament. I'm sorry. He says, For we live by faith, not by sight.

12:20 That's in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7. These words frame everything. We live by faith, not by sight. Not we believe by faith when sight isn't available, not we tolerate the unseeable until things become clearer, but we live by faith. It's the orientation, it's the posture, it's the framework through which everything else gets interpreted. Sight-based living says, I will respond to what is in front of me. I will let what I can see determine what I believe.

13:04 But faith-based living says, I will respond to who God is. I will let what I know about his character determines how I walk through what I can see. And that is not the same thing. Thomas eventually got to believe because he saw. And Jesus was gracious enough to give him that. But the wilderness generation saw miracle after miracle and still couldn't break the proof cycle because they were trying to build lasting trust on a foundation of accumulated evidence. And evidence, as it turns out, is not stable enough of a foundation for that.

13:50 Because evidence shifts. Circumstances change, the supply runs out, the next hard thing shows up before we're even ready. But the character of God, his faithfulness, his covenant, his track record across all of history, that does not shift. That's what we're meant to anchor to. Not the last miracle, but the God who did it. So let's go back to Thomas for just one more minute, because I think the most important part of his story is actually the part we don't talk about very much. That's the week between. Think about what that week was like for Thomas.

14:34 He's heard from people he trusts, his closest friends, people who he had walked with Jesus just as long as he had, people he'd been around day after day after day, the other disciples walking with Jesus. He'd heard from those people that Jesus was alive. They'd seen him. They told him that he was right there in the room with them. And Thomas is sitting with that for seven days, just thinking about what he'd heard, but knowing he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. He doesn't have proof. And I think it's worth asking, what was happening in Thomas during that week?

15:19 What was he wrestling with? What did he do with the gap between the testimony of his friends and the evidence his own eyes hadn't yet received? Here's what I find pretty remarkable. Despite all of that, he stayed. When Jesus appears the second time, Thomas is there, still with the disciples, but still in the room. He didn't walk away. He didn't decide the whole thing was a lie and go back to us fishing nets. He stayed in the tension. He kept showing up. And I think that is actually a form of faith.

16:01 Imperfect, unresolved, unconfirmed faith, but faith nonetheless. Because I think sometimes we have this idea that faith means walking around with total certainty and zero questions. But Thomas shows us a different picture. Sometimes faith looks like staying in the room even when you haven't seen it yet. Sometimes faith looks like still showing up, still being present, still remaining in the community of people who believe, even when you're in your own dark week of waiting for a confirmation. Jesus shows up for Thomas in that place, and he will show up for you there too.

16:46 So let me bring this all the way home for a second, because I want this to be something you can actually carry with you this week. Is there something you're waiting to see before you'll believe it? A promise God has spoken over you that you've been holding at arm's length until it proves itself and until you can prove it to others? Maybe a prayer you've been praying for so long that somewhere along the way, the expectation quietly is just drained out of it. I want to ask you something gently. Have you been in a week between a place where you've heard the testimony, you know what God has done for others, you have your own history with God, but right now and this particular thing, you just haven't seen it for yourself.

17:41 If so, stay in the room, stay close to God, keep believing. Don't let the unseen become the unanswered. Don't let the waiting become the verdict. Thomas's dark week was not the end of the story, and yours isn't either. The wilderness generation had more evidence than almost anyone in human history, and it still wasn't enough to sustain them because they were looking to the miracles to carry what only a relationship with God could hold. So the question this week isn't whether you have enough evidence. You probably have more history with God than you're currently giving yourself credit for.

18:25 The question is, are you willing to walk toward the promise before it becomes visible? Are you willing to stay in the room? Are you willing to let faith be the first thing that moves instead of the thing that waits for proof? Because that is the faith Jesus called blessed, not the faith that demanded to see the wounds before it would believe, the faith that held on in the dark weak, the faith that showed up anyway, the faith that said, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm still here.

19:32 And he is not walking away from you either. But he is inviting you into something deeper than a faith that runs on evidence. He's inviting you into a faith that walks by what is true, even when it isn't yet visible. A faith that stays in the room. A faith that holds on in the week between. A faith that has decided the character of God is more stable foundation than anything I can see from here. Seeing is not believing. Believing is believing. And the seeing often follows.

20:16 Next week, we are closing out our series in The Language of Faith with a phrase I think a lot of us have said in our hardest moments. I just don't feel it anymore. We're gonna ask what happens when the emotional connection to God goes quiet, and whether faith can survive when the feeling doesn't show up. That one is going to be really personal, and I think it's gonna speak to a lot of you. So I hope you'll join us to close out this series. And until then, keep asking, keep listening, and keep walking toward the promise, even before you can see it.

21:15 I send a short email called This Week's Question, a Quiet Invitation, and it's a simple reflection to help you stay grounded, to pay attention, to dive deeper into God's Word, and to walk with God throughout your week. You can sign up at myquestion for you.com, bringing you encouragement for your spirit and wisdom for your walk.