Gaining Spiritual Sight To Illuminate All Shadows

Mark 5:34

He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Faith is the cornerstone of the spiritual path to enlightenment, it is cardinal for our personal salvation, it is the spark of light that illuminates the darkest corner, our faith is our trust in God. When a particular word occurs hundreds of times in the Bible, it’s definitely one for us to spend some time to understand. 

In Koine Greek, in the original translations of the New Testament, we come across the term ‘Pistis’ (πίστις), which neatly translates as faith, belief, trust, as well as confidence. To have faith is not to merely believe something to be true, within it is a fierce sense of personal trust and active confidence. In everyday Greek and Hellenistic literature we find that this term is not merely an intellectual faith, one that man may have towards knowing that the colour of the sky is blue, or that the Sun is made of hydrogen, helium and various other periodic elements, the faith that we learn through the term pistis is also a spiritual faith, we exist in a covenant of faith. 

John 3:16 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 

A man has entrusts his friend to look after his beloved pet while he goes on holiday, this trust is an act of pistis, and in a similar fashion albeit on magnitudes vastly more immense, a follower of Christ gives pistis to Christ, we trust Christ with our eternal soul, with our spirit. This sense of Pistis that we have with God exists across fields of trust; we trust God to provide for us, we place our confidence in God to receive wisdom, and we also pledge allegiance to the will of God, knowing that what happens, must happen, even if we do not fully see the whole picture. This is a state of ultimate faith, to leap into the darkness and know that you shall land gently on green pastures.  

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths

One of the most common misconceptions with faith is that it is ‘blind faith’, that we are walking in the dark, unsure, without evidence, in an uneducated fashion, instead Christ comes to us as a historical figure that demonstrates the path to salvation, through his resurrection we see the journey of the soul pass from the physical world to the celestial realm of God. The world may be corrupted, evil may tear apart family and friends, but just because we are in a place of darkness, this does not mean we are walking unguided. 

2 Corinthians 5:7

For we walk by faith, not by sight

As followers of Christ we are united by our faith, the unshakeable bond of the new covenant that allows man, women and child across the world to come together in something greater than themselves, we come together in our faith in God. As the ebb and flow of the world moves around us as ideological waves grow and fade, we remain steadfast in our unwavering belief, a firm confidence in Christ our messiah, in total obedience to our God. 

2 Timothy 4:7 

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith