It was a beautiful summer evening. Sunlight cascaded across the sky, turning clouds vibrant shades of orange and red.

I found myself collapsed on a curb, watching my son Asher attempt to ride a tricycle. He was only two at the time, so his short legs couldn’t reach the pedals. Yet he didn’t quit, and I couldn’t help but swell with joy and pride as I witnessed my little man’s resilience.

As I sat there watching my son, God dropped something into my heart. I heard the words I am love. Now, I’ve been in church my whole life, so this revelation didn’t seem like anything new. But I decided to push aside my preconceptions of God’s love.

As I quieted myself, I sensed God was about to reveal a facet of his love I had yet to experience or comprehend. Within seconds I heard,

I am love, and faith is my love language.

At first, his words didn’t make any sense. My first thought was, God, faith isn’t one of Gary Chapman’s five love languages.

But then I remembered a verse from the book of Hebrews,

“And without faith living within us it would be impossible to please God. For we come to God in faith knowing that he is real and that he rewards the faith of those who give all their passion and strength into seeking him.”

Hebrews 11:6 TPT

That’s it, I thought. God, we please you by our faith. And since we please you by our faith, that’s how we reveal our love for you.

I expected God to celebrate my response . . . but that’s not what happened. You see, I was making it about me—what I could do to prove myself. This wasn’t, however, about me. It was about him.

God showed me that faith isn’t just how we show our love for him—although God does find great pleasure in our faith because of what it does in us. Rather, the whole idea of faith being God’s love language is about how he shows his love to us. God showed me that it wasn’t about me proving my love for him through my faith and works. It was about me receiving his love by acknowledging his faith in me, which, ultimately, empowers my faith and works.

Let’s think about that for a moment because this revelation altered my perspective of God’s expression of love.

When I acknowledge, affirm, and applaud my son, he feels seen, known, and strengthened by my love. My faith in him inspires him to see himself with wider eyes, challenging his ever-growing idea of what he’s capable of.

In a similar way, God’s faith in us empowers us to go beyond our limitations. His love revealed through faith offers new wings, lifting us into the wonder of our true self in Christ. That’s what God’s love does!

Our low view of God’s faith, hope, and love keeps us from becoming everything that he speaks over us. Keep in mind that faith, hope, and love are the qualities that bridge the eternity in our hearts with the temporal struggles of our world.

That is why we, as followers of Christ, must believe what God declares over us and embrace our identity as saints—people who practice and participate in the mystery and beauty of God’s kingdom. In short, saints merge the worlds of what is and what will be, building for God’s kingdom in whatever space they find themselves.

In Hebrews 12, we find a list of saints who were infused with a passion that was sparked by God’s faith in them. With God in their corner, they accomplished the extraordinary. This world was unworthy of these men and women because they belonged to another. These saints could see the unseen.

But here’s what’s interesting: the fact that they belonged to another world made them exactly what our world needed. They were catalysts for change, fueled by a vision that moved us forward in God’s great story of redemption and reconciliation.

I was so inspired by the the New Testament’s frequent use of the word saints as an identifier for followers of Christ that it became the focus of my first book, Saints: Becoming More than “Christians” (Revell, 2020). Wrapped in the ancient word saint is a divine invitation to discover who God created you to be and to awaken yourself to the life you were meant to know.

My friend, we must follow in their footsteps. We are, after all, invited to join their number by looking to Jesus, the perfecter of our faith.

In addition to being the perfecter of our faith, Jesus is also the evidence of God’s faith in us. God sent Jesus before you ever took a step toward him. Before you ever did anything good, God drove his sword—the cross that reclaimed our world for Christ—deep into the ground, revealing his faith in our humanity.

The writer of Hebrews penned,

“We look away from the natural realm and we fasten our gaze onto Jesus who birthed faith within us and who leads us forward into faith’s perfection. His example is this: Because his heart was focused on the joy of knowing that you would be his, he endured the agony of the cross and conquered its humiliation, and now sits exalted at the right hand of the throne of God!”

Hebrews 12:2 TPT

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’ll rise to the level of faith placed on us by those who are most important in our life. Something powerful unlocks within us when others believe in us—when others see who we can become and help us along the way.  

Jesus sees so much in us he births faith within us and leads us forward into faith’s perfection. His faith in us awakens us to our true self, the self that is recreated in his image. When we accept Jesus’s faith in us, it lifts our heads and changes our perspective as we soar to new heights of possibility, strengthened by the power of his love.

God has faith in you because he sees you in Christ. He’s confident in the work of his Spirit. He’s confident that he can finish the good work he started. His faithfulness is not contingent on your worthiness. He called and chose you to be his, and nothing shall separate you from his love.

The question is, will you accept his faith in you? Will you embrace the hope he’s placed on and in you?

It is time for us to become saints—people whose lives are marked by a beauty and power that belong to the age to come.

Love has won, and God sees you through his victory.