Let me take just a couple of moments to tell you about faith, whether or not you are a Christian. The Bible gives the oldest definition of faith, which says, and I quote, that "Faith is the evidence of things not seen and the substance of things hoped for." When you examine that definition, you find that faith is actually taking the place of something tangible.
When you can see something, that is the evidence. When you can feel something, that is the evidence. When you simply know something and you haven't anything to see or anything to feel or hear, or any way to perceive it with the other senses, that is faith.
Now, Christians pontificate about faith and they talk about what is faith and what isn't faith, and we actually intellectualize about faith and all its assorted complexities. I'm here to tell you that when you are talking about faith, man, you are talking about a big thing.
If you're walking on the ground and you can see the ground, it is your faith that allows you to take that next step because you have the faith that the ground is going to hold you. If you have put money in your pocket and you go to the store to buy something, you put your hands in your pocket, you have faith that the money that you put in there is still going to be there. Essentially, faith is how you live your life and faith is how I live my life.
If you have read this blog thus far, you are probably asking yourself the question, what is he selling all this for? The reason I'm selling all this is that I recently have had something manifest that I have been having faith for, for quite some time. Based on my earlier musing in this blog, you might say, "If you have faith, you should have been excited about it all along, even though you didn't have any physical evidence." To a point, you're right, but I got to tell you, you only use your faith for those things that you don't know. You may act as if, but if you don't know, it's a whole different ball of wax.
In the movie, The Secret, they talk about how you don't have to see the whole stairway, just take the first step. I want to expound on that, expand on that, and say, even if you don't know it's a second floor, you keep taking the steps. It is the faith that there is a second floor up there and faith causes you to perceive the second floor as though you're actually standing on the floor. A weird thing happens. When you have the faith that something is the case, that something becomes the case. If you have had faith for something to be the case and it wasn't, it's nothing more than a loss or a lack of faith.
People have not gotten what they want or people who have lost what they had, they will deny the faith I'm talking about. They will have excuses about why they didn't get what they were expecting to get, but the truth of the matter is, you can have your faith or you can have an excuse, but you cannot have both.
I have been walking up a particular stairway with the attitude that there is a second floor for so long, and today, the second floor materialized. The second floor materialized and I saw the second floor, and I'm standing on the second floor and I'm truly, truly excited. The good thing about it is, the continuum between what was and what's going to be, is joined from one point to the other by faith. Each time, the faith materializes into some evidence that you can have of the particular thing, then you stretch your faith out a little bit more for something else, and that's how we live every day.
Being that I just reached the second floor and I'm speaking in an analogy here, I can only hope that I will have a third floor and a fourth floor and a fifth floor. I'm encouraging you that no matter what it looks like, you might not see a banister, you might not see the second step, you may not have a clue about the fact that there's a second floor. I'm urging you to get present to the fact that you live by faith and I want to further encourage you to use your words to activate your faith.
If I've helped you, if this has come at a time that you needed it, if you are struggling in your endeavors, if you are wondering if you have any faith left, if you are wondering, can you make the next step, I'm here to tell you that you can. This blog is produced for you right now and I urge you to take it to heart. Not only am I urging you to take it to heart, I am suggesting that if this blog does anything for you, do me a big favor and share it with someone that you know, someone that you love, someone that you care about.
I end this blog just like I end all of my blogs. You have yourself a good time. I mean, have yourself a really good time. As extraordinary coaches, we have to have faith. There's no other way to do it.
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