” I will be as real as you make me.” There is something about the idea that this is a part of God being real for us that is not satisfying. This could easily be viewed that God is in fact not real and that our faith is just make believe. We are inventing a God who is not really there and only lives in our imagination. This can be the assessment of non believers, but it can also be something we can feel as well. We much prefer for God to show up in ways that do not require our faith for God to seem real.

Thankfully, I think that everyone has experiences like that in their lives, stories they can tell of answered prayer where God does dramatic things in their lives that clearly show that He is real. And, of course we share those stories with one another. But I also think that everyone feels as if there is a lack of consistent experiences like that in their lives. There are times, as many if not more, where God does not seem real, where life unfolds as if God did not exist, when looking for Him to “show up” results in bitter disappointment. That is a difficult tension to live with.

We tend to believe that if God would “show up” more consistently, then we and others would have a stronger faith. And there is a theology that believes that God wants to “show up” more consistently and it is somehow our fault that we are not experiencing that. The idea is that we need to pursue more of these “showing up” experiences. However, there is a strong witness in the Old Testament that dramatic experiences of God’s presence and power do not in fact lead to strong faith.

The Israelites in the desert had a consistent display of God’s presence with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night to lead them. They also had numerous experiences of God’s power providing for them (the miracles in their escape from Egypt, water from a rock, manna and quail from the sky.) We would think that so many experiences where they are able to see God’s presence and power would give them a strong faith in God. Yet on the edge of the Promised Land, they have no faith that God will enable them to defeat the giants that are in the land.

Elijah is another example. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal and Asherah on Mt Carmel with the altars and the sacrificed bulls. God clearly demonstrates that He is the real God when He burns up the altar. This is probably the most obvious experience of God being real in history. Yet, what is the result? Aside from the initial response of those who witness this, there is no record of Israel repenting or following the Lord after this event. Jezebel is not convinced, but instead threatens Elijah. And most remarkably, Elijah lacks faith and flees for his life out of fear of Jezebel. The kind of event that we desire to convince the world and to strengthen our faith accomplished neither of those things in this story.

And notice that when God encounters Elijah in the cave to which he has fled, God is not in any of the dramatic experiences. He is not in the strong wind, the earthquake or the fire. He is in the subtle, the sound of a low whisper. It seems that God is telling Elijah that He is not only present in the dramatic, so Elijah is not to look for Him there alone. By faith, Elijah is to live as if God is real all the time.

Luke 18:8 “when the Son of Man come, will he find faith on earth?” What is the faith that Jesus wants to find? A faith that is informed by dramatic experiences of God but not dependent on them. We can and should ask God to “show up” in our work, but we also need to learn what it means to work by faith and not lose heart when we are lacking those experiences. It is precisely when we are facing situations that appear as if we cannot count on God that we need to exercise faith, the conviction of things NOT seen (Heb 11:1).