Eyes On Jesus | Having Faith to Accomplish & Faith to Overcome
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Faith is the most essential part of our walk as purpose-driven Christian women. In fact, faith is where it all begins. Ephesians 2:8-9 puts it plainly:
“...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Notice what this verse tells us. Our salvation, the very foundation of everything we are and everything we have, did not come through anything we did. It was not earned through our good works or achieved through our own effort. It came by grace, through faith. Faith is quite literally the doorway through which we become everything God created us to be, and receive all that He has for us.
And it does not stop at salvation. Just as we begin our walk with God through faith, we are called to continue it by faith. Hebrews 10:38 reminds us that “my righteous ones will live by faith.” Faith is not just how we start. It is how we are meant to live, every single day.
What Is Faith?
Before we can talk about living by faith, we need to understand what faith truly is. Because we cannot truly live by something we do not first understand.
Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
So at its most basic, faith is believing in something we cannot necessarily see. Even though we cannot physically see God, we believe that He exists, that He is real, and that He is exactly who He says He is. We cannot touch Him, and yet we sense His presence, and we know that when we draw near to Him, He is there.
But faith is more than just believing. When we dig deeper, we find that true faith is made up of two parts: intellectual assent and trust. Intellectual assent is the belief part. It is simply believing something to be true, that God is who He says He is, our sustainer, provider, and comforter. Trust, however, goes a step further. It is being so assured of those things that we actually rely on them. So we are not just called to believe that God is our provider, we are called to trust Him to provide, confident that what we hope for, He will bring to pass.
Faith to Accomplish
Now that we understand what faith truly is, we can begin to see the different ways it shows up in our walk with God. And the first is the faith to accomplish.
This is the faith we most often think about. It is the faith to believe God for the impossible, and then, being so assured of who He is, to actually step out and do the very things He has called us to do. And there is perhaps no better picture of this than Peter, stepping out of the boat to walk on water.
In Matthew 14, the disciples are out on the water when they see Jesus walking towards them. Peter, in a moment of remarkable faith, says, "Lord, if it's You, tell me to come to You on the water." Jesus simply responds, "Come," and Peter does just that. In that moment, Peter does not just believe that Jesus can call him out onto the water, he acts on that belief. He climbs out of the boat, and he does the impossible. He walks on water.
This is faith to accomplish in action. It is the faith that gets us out of the boat. The faith that says yes to God even when what He is asking seems impossible.
And here is the thing. The things God asks us to do are often impossible, because He tends to ask us to do the extraordinary things, not the ordinary ones. Like telling a man to build an ark for a flood that had never been seen. Or telling a man to stretch out his hand to part a sea, with an army closing in behind him. Time and time again, God calls His people to do things that make no sense in the natural. And the reality is, without faith, we would never step into any of the things God has for us. We are, after all, "created anew in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). Faith to accomplish is what enables us to walk in them.
But as we know, Peter’s story does not end there. Because getting out of the boat was one thing. Staying on the water was another.
Faith to Overcome
Peter had the faith to get out of the boat. But Matthew 14:30 tells us that when he saw the wind and the waves, he was afraid, and he began to sink. In that moment, Peter cried out, “Lord, save me!” And immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him.
Here is what we learn from this. Sometimes it is not the getting out of the boat that is the problem. Sometimes we have the faith to accomplish. We say yes to God, we step out, and we begin to walk. But then the winds come, the waves rise, the fear, anxiety and worry rises, and the obstacles we face threaten to pull us under.
This is why we need more than just the faith to accomplish. We also need the faith to overcome. Because there will always be things that rise up and attempt to prevent us from walking in what God has called us to do. And this is exactly what the author of Hebrews addresses.
“Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”
Here, the Christian life is likened to a race. Not a race where we compete against one another, but an individual, appointed course that God has set before each of us. And along this course, there will be weights that try to slow us down. Things like anxiety, fear, worry, or even habitual sin. There will be obstacles, like shame, that whisper we are disqualified before we have even begun.
But notice what Peter did when he began to sink. He fixed his eyes back on Jesus and cried out to Him. And that is exactly what Hebrews tells us to do.
“We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.”
Peter did not sink because the storm was too strong. He sank the moment he took his eyes off Jesus and onto the wind. And the same is true for us. When shame tells us we are unworthy, we overcome it by fixing our eyes on the One who has already declared us righteous. Having the faith to believe that in Christ there is now no condemnation (Romans 8:1), and the assurance to trust that what He says about us is truer than what shame says. When habitual sin trips us up, we overcome it by fixing our eyes on the One who has already set us free. Having the faith to believe that sin no longer has dominion over us (Romans 6:14), and the assurance to walk in that freedom rather than the weight we once carried.
It is only by keeping our eyes on Jesus that we can strip off every weight, run with endurance, and overcome anything that tries to stand in our way. Because He is not only the one who begins our faith, He is the one who perfects it. He gives us the very faith we need to overcome.
Final Thoughts
Faith is where our walk with God begins, and it is what carries us through every step of it. The faith to be saved, the faith to step out, and the faith to overcome are all the same faith. Believing God is who He says He is, and trusting Him enough to actually rely on Him.
And the beautiful truth is that we do not have to produce this faith on our own. Jesus is the author and perfecter of it. So whatever season you find yourself in, keep your eyes fixed on Him. Because a life lived by faith, from beginning to end, is a life anchored in the One who never fails.
This month’s theme in the Living a Purposeful Life® planner is Faith to Overcome.
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