These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. — Hebrews 11:13
Faith is a subject that we often approach from a variety of viewpoints. Sometimes it is having enough faith. Sometimes having stronger faith. Other times it’s faith through a struggle. In each and every circumstance, we can see how important faith is.
Hebrews 11 talks a lot about faith. It shares what is often called the roll call of faith. We look at people from throughout the scripture that acted in or through faith. Names like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Sara all appear. Other names like Enoch, Rahab, Gideon, and David.
The scripture goes on to talk about others that the writer refers to as “these all” in combination with these well-known names above. The writer shares how they all had faith through things like stonings, temptation, mocking, scourging, and more. It was not that these were necessarily less faithful, they were just not as well known.
As our focus verse says, they all had faith. They were persuaded of them and embraced the promises of faith. There was evidence of their faith in their lives and in their actions so that those around them were convinced they had faith.
If your faith were put to the test, would you be counted as one of “these all?” Would there be enough evidence of faith in your life that when people look back on it, they can say you were a person that held on to your faith? We may never see the promises that we hold in faith in our lifetime just as these, but we should desire to have this same level of faith.
