This might be your answer!
Friend, there is something I want you to understand, and I need you to pay attention to it very carefully. Because if you miss this, you will keep misjudging your walk with God.
How do you know you are walking in faith when your life does not make sense? When what you are seeing does not match what God said? When the outcomes of your life are not aligning with the promises you
believe?
Because many people have tied their faith to outcomes. They look at comfort, results, progress, and they conclude, "This must be faith." And if those things are not present, they begin to question themselves.
But faith has never been defined by outcomes.
If that were the case, then you would have to explain Hebrews 11, where the Bible speaks of people who walked in faith, yet did not receive what was promised in their lifetime.
The Scripture does not say they lacked faith. It says in Hebrews 11:13, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off."
So that means faith can be present even when the outcome is not visible.
Look at Joseph. God showed him a picture of his future in Genesis 37, but the process looked nothing like the promise. Betrayal, slavery, prison. If you were to judge his faith by his circumstances, you would say everything was going wrong.
But Joseph never let go of what God showed him. And in Genesis 50:20, he was able to say, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good."
Look at David. Anointed as king in 1 Samuel 16, yet he spent years running, hiding, surviving. The oil was on his head, but the throne was nowhere in sight. Would you say he was not in faith during those years?
Faith is not validated by how comfortable your life looks. It is revealed in what you continue to hold on to when your life does not look like what God said.
And this is where many people get confused. They think that if they are still afraid, if they are still struggling, if they are still trying to figure things out, then they are not in faith.
But faith is not the absence of pressure. Faith is not the absence of questions. Faith is not even the absence of emotion.
Faith is this—God has spoken, and I choose to trust what He said, and I align my life with it, even when I do not see it yet.
That is why Hebrews 11:1 says, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Not seen.
So if you need to see it before you believe it, that is not faith. 2 Corinthians 5:7 says, "We walk by faith, not by sight."
But if you can hold on to what God has said, and continue to walk in alignment with it, even when your life is not reflecting it yet, that is faith.
And you must not let culture, pressure, or even religious voices redefine this for you. Because some will make it look like faith must always produce immediate visible results. That if you are truly in faith, your life must look a certain way.
But God does not always start where He intends to finish. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord."
He can show you a picture of your future, and still allow you to walk through a process that looks like the opposite of it.
And in that space, your faith is not proven by what is happening around you. It is proven by what you refuse to let go of within you.
So don't measure your faith by your outcomes. Measure it by your response.
Are you still trusting God? Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding."
Are you still aligning with what He said?
Are you still moving, even when it does not make sense?
Then you are walking in faith.
And if you hold on to that faith, not perfectly, not flawlessly, but consistently, you will eventually see what God has spoken. Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart."
Because faith is not built on what you see.
Faith is built on who God is. Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?". You're reading from your handsome friend John Petra!