Day 4 of 6 — Glow in the Dark. About 3 minutes.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
A farmer can sell a crop that does not exist. In the spring, with nothing yet in the ground, he can agree a price for grain he will not cut until autumn, and a buyer will sign for wheat nobody has grown. It sounds reckless and it is the opposite of reckless. The farmer is not promising on the strength of the field, which could flood or burn or come up thin. He is promising on the strength of an agreement and a market that has been settling deals like it since the middle of the eighteen hundreds. The whole arrangement rests on whether the other party can be relied upon, and both men would tell you that is the only part they examined closely.
Paul records something about the Macedonians that their bank balances cannot explain. For to their power, I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves. To their power means as much as they were able. Beyond their power means more than they were able, which is not something a person achieves by trying harder.
And nobody leaned on them to do it. That phrase willing of themselves is a single word meaning self chosen, of one’s own accord, and it appears only twice in the whole New Testament, both times in this chapter. Paul was not applying pressure. The next verse says they were begging him to let them take part.
That is a faith promise, and it is why the word promise belongs in it. You are not writing down what you can already see in an account. You are writing down what you are trusting God to supply through you across a year you have not lived yet. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. If the number is one you could cover comfortably out of what is sitting there, it is a budget line rather than a promise, and there is nothing wrong with a budget line except that it asks nothing of God. Ask Him instead what He intends to send through you, and write that down.
Growth principle: A faith promise is not what you can see in the account. It is what you are trusting God to send through you.
Take it with you: Ask God what He wants to supply through you this year, and write down that number rather than the safe one.
Pause and pray: Lord, I keep promising only what I can already cover, and calling it wisdom. Show me what You intend to send through me, and give me the nerve to write it down. Amen.
From Sunday’s message: A Faith That Promises (2 Corinthians 8) · Sunday, October 18, 2026
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