If Faith Waited For Proof, Nothing Would Happen

This is episode 3 of our Foundations Of Faith Series.

What if the strongest faith you ever walk in is the kind that believes before your senses agree? Today we dig into Jesus’ blessing in John 20:29 and unpack why believing without seeing isn’t blind at all—it’s trust anchored in God’s Word that builds substance long before evidence arrives. We talk candidly about doubt, delay, and the “Thomas effect,” where circumstances feel so loud that they drown out promise, and we offer a clear way forward.

We break faith into a practical flow you can live with: hearing, conviction, persuasion, declaration, manifestation. You’ll hear how Romans 10, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Hebrews 11, and Romans 4 map this journey, showing that sight is a follower, not a leader. Abraham hoped against hope, Elijah announced rain into a blue sky, and Moses endured as seeing the Invisible—each moment reveals that manifestation obeys faith, not eyes. Along the way, we rethink Thomas with compassion: his issue wasn’t mere skepticism; it was a demand for proof before trust. Jesus met him, yet reserved a special blessing for those who choose conviction first.

If you’re waiting for visible change, this conversation offers tools to keep your heart steady. We share a simple daily practice: choose one promise that contradicts your current situation, speak it each day, and let it become the lens you look through. Pray with us—Lord, strengthen me to believe your Word even when my eyes cannot yet confirm it—and seal it with this confession: I walk by faith, and my sight will catch up. Whether you’re facing a diagnosis, a delay, or a closed door, you’ll learn how to acknowledge reality without handing it authority over what God already said.

If Faith Revealed helps you see the Word more clearly or strengthens your walk with God, leave a quick review on Apple or Spotify, share this episode with someone who needs courage today, and subscribe on YouTube with notifications on so you never miss future teachings. Your support helps others hungry for truth find their way here—thank you for standing with us.

Transcript

Believing Without Seeing

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This is the season. This is the moment. Welcome back to Faith Revealed. I'm VM Mansfield, and today we are continuing our Foundations of Faith series with one of the most confrontational statements Jesus ever made about faith. He blesses the ones who believe without requiring physical confirmation. What if the greatest faith you will ever walk in is the kind that believes God before your senses ever agree? Faith does not wait for sight, faith creates sight. Look at John chapter twenty, verse twenty-nine. Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. This episode will reveal that believing without seeing is not blind faith. Before we move on today, I want to take a moment and honor someone who is incredibly special to us here at Faith Revealed, and that is our dear brother David Shepherd in Chicago. David, we want to just say thank you. Thank you for your continued support. Thank you for your help. Thank you for your genuine love for this podcast. You've been with us, you've stood with us, you've believed in what God is doing to this ministry. Your faithfulness does not go unnoticed. Your encouragement matters more than you probably ever realize. We're truly grateful for the heart that you carry, not just for this podcast, but for the truth of God's word. David, you're deeply appreciated. We honor you today. We pray God continues to bless you, to strengthen you, surround you with his peace, with his favor, and thank you for being a part of the Faith Revealed Family. Really appreciate you, brother. Today's question comes from Rebecca in Ohio, who writes, You explain how faith comes by hearing. If hearing produces faith, how do I keep my faith strong when I don't see anything change in my life yet? Well, that's a very honest question, Rebecca, and it's one probably every believer encounters. So I believe last week we talked about Romans chapter 10, verse 7. Uh it faith comes by hearing. So it tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, but scripture also teaches us that faith operates before sight, not after it. Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7, for we walk by faith, not by sight. So when you do not see anything changing yet, it doesn't mean that faith isn't working. It means that faith is doing exactly what it's designed to do, operating in the unseen realm before it manifests in the natural. Okay? So the key to keeping your faith strong is understanding that faith is sustained the same way it's activated. Now, this this is for everybody. Okay? Faith is sustained the same way it's activated by continued hearing. You don't maintain faith by watching circumstances, okay? You maintain faith by feeding on the word of God. Jesus said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Faith lives on the word the same way your body lives on food. When nothing looks different on the outside, the work is still happening on the inside. The word is still establishing substance before you ever see evidence. So don't measure faith by what you see changing around you. Measure faith by what you're continuing to believe, what you're continuing to confess, what you're continuing uh to align with in the word. Okay, that's the key, is you're aligning in the word. Uh we're not, I'm I don't get into the new age, I don't get into the crystals and the sage and the grass and the this and the that. I am a word person, okay? And I think Christians should be word people. Faith grows in the unseen long before it appears in the scene. So stay in the word, keep hearing, keep trusting the process God has already set in motion. And I know that trust the process thing is somewhat of a triggered phrase. Listen, God has a process. He absolutely has a process. Trust God. Trust what God has already set in motion. Don't allow faith to become weakened by delay, but rather allow it to be strengthened by continued hearing. Okay? So that would have been another good question to put on last week, but we put it on this week. I wanted to keep it close. Uh, Rebecca, thank you so much for your question. And I encourage you, if you guys have questions, write to us. Send them in. We've got links available in our magazine. We got links available in the descriptions. Send us your questions. I love when you write us questions. Send us your testimonies, your prayer requests, your questions. Just write to us. We want to hear from you. So let's get into our let's get into our study here. We're gonna look at the word believed. It's defined as to be persuaded, to place confidence in, to entrust one's spiritual well-being to Christ, to rest one's weight upon. Okay. Faith is not hoping, God will. It's resting in what God has said. Okay, seen is to perceive with the eyes, to behold, to discern, to experience. So that that word is actually kind of what you think it is. Uh for the most part, it's what we imagine seen to be. Jesus contrasts physical sight with spiritual conviction, though. Okay, so makarios is the word blessed, fully satisfied is what it means, favored, to be in a state of spiritual prosperity regardless of the outward conditions. Oh, let me say that again. To be in a state of spiritual prosperity regardless of outward conditions, walking by faith positions you in blessing before circumstance ever shifts. Okay. In John chapter 20, verse 29, Jesus said unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. So I call this the Thomas dimension. I don't like to say uh doubting Thomas. I don't like the term doubting Thomas. Okay. I just I don't think Thomas was a skeptic. He walked with Jesus. He was a disciple who believed Jesus. Until circumstances challenged his faith. His mistake was was not maybe doubt. His mistake was demanding sight before believing. Okay? So I don't like I call it the Thomas dimension. I don't like the doubting Thomas thing. Uh so look at verse 27, John chapter 20, verse 27, before I go off on a sandit. Then saith he to Thomas, reach hither thy finger and behold my hands. Then reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side. Now let me just stop for a second here and wreck a lot of people's day, but I promise we'll put we'll make you feel better by the end of this broadcast. Uh but I I do I I'm gonna just absolutely spoil the goose here. Listen, if if I was crucified and I laid my life down, because Jesus said I have the power to lay my life down, and I have the power to take it up again, I've received that power of my Father. No man takes my life from me, I willingly lay it down, and I will call it back up. Okay, we can't even fathom that, first of all. But if that happened to you or me, and we were crucified, and we had a hole right there in our hand, and we said, Alright, Thomas, touch it. And then we take our side and we say, take your hand in there. If that was a physical body, if you just take your fingers and poke them on my side too hard, it'll bruise and it hurts. If you just poke me too hard, it hurts. So I just want you to, without totally cooking the goose and spoiling it at the same time, or cooking a spoiled goose, uh I want you to just let that kind of saturate for a minute and think about what we're expecting out of Jesus. Okay, so he says, thrust it into my side. Verse 27. He tells him to do this. Be not faithless, but believing. Thomas believed because he saw. Okay. Jesus bless those who believe before sight. Listen, I'm still hung up on Thomas. I'm just gonna tell you. All these people that say, I can't wait to stick my hand, he don't have nail holes in his hands anymore. Okay, if you might have had a vision of it, he might have appeared to you like that. But the Jesus that sits on the throne is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, he don't have nail holes, and he doesn't have a big hole in his side that everybody's just gonna go in there and stick their fist in. All right, that that's my little tangent there. That's where I'm spoiling the goose. Okay, just because Thomas saw that, that was Thomas's problem. The point I wanted to make out of this before we move on, we're actually gonna flat pause here, and I'm gonna chase a rabbit, even though I promised myself I wouldn't chase rabbits. I'm gonna chase one like a dog chasing a rabbit. Listen, I'm gonna make a good point, though. Whatever you are distraught about, okay? Whatever your hiccup is, whatever your grief is, whatever your problem and your doubt and your unbelief and whatever's causing that, whatever the root is, Jesus can appear to you and answer that in his appearance. I don't necessarily think that the rest of the disciples saw nail holes in his hands because they weren't battling that. They weren't struggling with saying, I saw him crucified, I saw him dead, I saw them put him in a tomb. I know he said he's coming back, but I saw him die. Okay, that was to Thomas. That's not to us. Okay, we're not doubting that. If you're doubting that now, you just flat don't believe. You're an unbeliever. Okay, we believe because we believe you raised from the dead. Right? That was Thomas's problem, is he was letting the circumstance of witnessing the crucifixion and the death and the burial of Jesus, he was letting that circumstance overrule what Jesus had already said was going to happen. A lot of us do that. I know I've I've probably upset a couple people, but the rest of you are adults and you you understand what I'm telling you about the hands, the nail-scarred hands and the or the nail holes in his hands. And listen, do you think that that the one that the Bible called God manifest in the flesh is going to scar and have imperfect bodies? No. Listen, you're not a scar. You're his body. You're his hands. You don't have holes in you. Listen, I tell some of these preachers, your buckets have holes in them. They don't hold water. Okay? They don't you don't have holes in you. Okay. All right, so let's get back to the, let's get back to the study here. Jesus blesses those who believe before sight. Okay, Matthew chapter 9, verse 29, according to your faith, be it unto you. Jesus never said, according to what you see. He said, manifestation obeys faith, not sight. What do you say? Where did he say that? According to your faith, be it unto you. That's where he said it. Jesus said, according to what you see. No, he didn't. No. He did not say according to what you see. It's according to your faith, be it unto you. Manifestation obeys faith. It does not obey sight. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7 says, For we walk by faith, not by sight. Sight is a follower, not a leader. Sight verifies what faith has already accepted. Okay. Abraham in Romans chapter 4, verse 18, against hope, believed hope. You see, we're going to reuse a lot of these verses because we set a scene with them, and I just stay with them. They work. Okay, and there's tons and tons of verses that we're going to be using. And if you have anything, you've got questions that you want to know about, please write to us. I'd be more than happy to try to answer your questions or try to find you the scripture that answers your questions. Abraham believed before he saw. His faith birthed his sight. Okay, Elijah in 1 Kings chapter 18, verse 41, said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat, and drink, for there is a sound of an abundance of rain. Go study that. They were in a desert, desolate, dried up wilderness. Nothing was raining. It was terrible for them. Elijah said, Go get up and eat. He wasn't hearing with his natural ear, he was hearing with his spirit. Hebrews 11 27 said, by faith that uh Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. Faith sees the invisible with more clarity than the natural eye sees the visible. I am concerned that some believers are looking through faith eyes that have cataracts. We need, we need a cat, a spiritual cataract surgery to get a, not Cadillac, but cataract, uh, to get rid of the scales on our eyes so that we can see past that. But generally, faith will see more clearly than the natural eye. If you walk by faith, if faith becomes your sight. Okay, faith becomes the most powerful when it is divorced from sight. Natural sight, I mean. When faith depends on sight, faith is weak. Okay, you cannot have strong faith and depend on sight. That that just will never, that never happens. When faith creates sight, faith is strong. Okay. So number one, when faith creates sight, faith is strong. But when faith depends on sight, faith is excruciatingly weak. Okay, and we've already talked about Hebrews 11:3. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Uh, we're still hearing from some of you that we're kind of a little bit confused on that. Faith does the framing. Sight arrives later. Okay? Your situation does not need to look promising for faith to be at work. I mean, that's that's just all there is to it. Faith builds the future before the eyes recognize it. Okay. Now, how do you activate faith? Or how do you activate uh belief without seeing? This this is a hard one for people. They they cannot uh seem to and I get it, we live in such a natural world, and so every everything is just so carnal centered. Hebrews 11:6 said, Without faith, it's impossible to please him. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is God, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Faith pleases God because faith trusts his word above all physical evidence. You hear that? It pleases God because it trusts his word above all physical evidence. Romans chapter 4, verse 21 said, and being fully persuaded that what he had promised, he was also able to perform. Okay, persuasion is not sight-based. Persuasion is word-based. So faith is hearing, conviction, persuasion, declaration, manifestation. The eyes catch up last. Okay? So you hear the word, the word becomes starts to, it starts to correct and become alive in you. Okay. So the the word will reprove doubt. It will just it will absolutely uh convict doubt on the spot. Then it causes you to develop what we call a persuasion. Okay, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That's the first episode of our series, The Foundations of Faith. Go back and listen to it and understand what that persuasion actually is. Okay, the declaration is now you begin to speak what faith says. You begin to speak what the word of God said. That's what caused the faith, that's what predactivated the faith, right? Okay, and then the very last thing is the manifestation. The eyes always catch up last. You're you ever heard the the term your eyes will uh will play tricks on you? So you you hear your eyes will play tricks on you, and people say, Oh, you're it's just your eyes playing tricks on you. Listen, your eyes are always, always playing tricks on you. So don't ever think for one second that whatever you see is the final reality. Okay, we don't believe what we see anyway. I I've spent uh countless times teaching that we don't we don't walk by sight, we walk by faith. Okay, so we're not looking for that to begin with. So when it comes to Thomas, what they call the doubting Thomas, I don't, I don't like that term at all, uh, but you know the the Thomas effect, so to speak, is we see a situation take place, and then all of a sudden, in our minds, we perceive an outcome to the situation, no matter what God's already spoken. So just like Thomas witnessed the crucifixion, he he witnessed the well, he was probably at Pilate's hall, he witnessed the whole process. Okay, so Thomas was standing there when Jesus rode into the east gate of Jerusalem and made his triumphal entry as it was prophesied that he would do. Okay. Everybody's looking for that to happen, and they missed it right there the day it happened. Okay, they went before him, laying fig leaves on the ground, crying, Hosanna in the highest, blessed be the king of our father David, blessed be the name of the Lord. Okay, so he went in. Thomas was standing there when they paraded him through the east gate of Jerusalem, and they were ready to crown him king right there on the spot. Thomas stood there and saw it. Thomas was there when Jesus said, I'm gonna go away. Where I'm going, you can't go. Okay, but I will not leave you orphans. Word comfortless means orphans. I will not leave you orphans, but I will come unto you and receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also, right? I will come unto you, I will come back to you. It could not have been any more personal than I. I will come back to you. That's what Jesus told him. Thomas was there. He was sitting there at the Passover Supper, what we call the Passover Supper, where Jesus was sitting there. Saying that he was going to go in and be taken, that they're going to do away with him. This is the last supper that we're going to have together. This is the blood of the new covenant. Drink this. This is my body. And Paul later reflected that it was his body which was broken for us. Because his body wasn't yet broken when Jesus sat there. Okay, he hadn't been crucified yet. So this is my body. Take eat, is what Jesus said. Paul later said, which was broken for you. See? Because the kingdom would be broken into shivers and dispersed even unto the Gentiles. So Thomas was sitting there when that happened. Thomas was there when he was arrested. Okay? Thomas saw him arrested. Thomas saw him taken into custody. Thomas saw him go into Pilate's hall, and he stood before Pilate. Now Thomas watched all this. You gotta understand, these are not Bible characters. These are people just like us. Thomas is no different than you and I. He was a human just like us. He saw him stand before Pilate. Pilate said, Are you the Christ? Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus looked at Pilate and said, You said it. So Pilate and scribes, he's king of the Jews. I don't think it was mockery. I think Pilate knew who he was looking at. They take him into Pilate's hall, they whip him, they beat him. They put a cross on his shoulders. He drags his own cross up to the hill called the place of the skull. Thomas is standing there watching this. Thomas is present when he said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And he said, It is finished. Thomas was standing there when it happened. It's the Thomas effect. You're standing in the hospital when they say you've got cancer or you've got this or you've got that or you've got six months to live, or when your loved one's standing there. It's the Thomas effect. You walk in there and you see them on life, you see this, and you cannot have faith because the situation is so surrounding you and so overwhelming to you that you cannot see past your nose of doubt, fear, and unbelief to see the outcome of what the Bible has already promised that you can have. It's the Thomas effect. See, it's where you're standing in the place of your situation, is just swirling around you in your mind, and it's all you can see. You cannot focus. That is why it is so vitally important to continue in the faith. That's air quotes if you're not watching it, if you're just listening, that's air quotes in the faith. Continue in the word is what we're saying. See, that's why it's so vital that you continue in the word daily. You don't have this this people can make fun of those people that do the daily Bible verse things all they want. I like it. Keep doing it. If you're one of those people that do that, keep doing it. If you're not doing it, you better start doing it. You need to walk daily in the word. You need to eat daily. And you need to, we we try to give you a task every week. And I I want you to do it every day, really, if you will. Uh, but we try to give you a task every week at the end of every episode for you to do to bring this into your life and to bring uh activation to faith so that so that when when you are faced with these problems and you're faced with this Thomas effect where everything's surrounding you so bad and you you just have no idea in the world how how you're ever going to get through it or what's gonna happen in the outcome, and your fear just starts to overtake you. Listen, if you would do what we tell you to do in practice, like the the things that we tell you at the end of the podcast, if you would do those, that would cause you to absolutely be able to become stable in faith when these situations arise. Real faith doesn't deny what you see, it denies what you see. It denies what you see the authority to define what God has spoken. So I'm I'm always saying that what's happening is happening. Okay, and we don't deny what happens or what's happening or what the situation is. We deny that situation the authority to define what God has spoken. Okay, God's word is the authority. So pray this with me. Say, Lord, strengthen me to believe your word, even when my eyes cannot yet confirm it. Strengthen me to believe your word, even when my eyes cannot yet confirm it. Confess this. Say, I walk by faith, and my sight will catch up. I want you to choose one promise from the scripture that contradicts your current situation, speak it daily until it becomes the lens from which you start to look through. Think that sight is the servant, faith is the master. I believe first, I see later. That's where we're gonna stop for the day. Uh, let the word settle in you. Uh, if faith reveals helps you to understand the word more clearly, if it strengthened your walk with God or your faith, please take 30 seconds, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Um, it helps us reach people who are hungry and looking for truth. Uh, it's one easy way that you can help spread the word as well. While you're at it, share this episode with somebody who needs it and uh that needs encouraging, who needs teaching from the word. If you're listening to us on YouTube, make sure to subscribe, turn on the notifications so you don't miss future teachings. Thank you for being a part of this community, and until the next time, may God continually bless you abundantly.

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Thank you for tuning in to Faith Revealed. Please subscribe, share, and join our email list to receive our monthly magazine and teaching updates, keeping you rooted in the Word. We appreciate you keeping us in your prayers, and we will see you next week right here on Faith Revealed.