Blessed Are Those Who Believe Without Seeing

Part 2 of a 5-part series on faith, grit, and the strength of character that only comes through hardship.

Everything in the world, in life, swings like a pendulum. There are seasons where everything feels stuck. Where you’re working harder than you ever have, doing all the right things, showing up, making the calls, staying faithful… and nothing is moving. In those seasons you start to wonder: is any of this actually leading anywhere?

And then, months or years later, you look back and see it. The trail was winding the whole time. The things that felt like dead ends were actually turning points. The waiting that felt pointless was building something within you couldn’t see yet. And somehow, through all of it, you ended up exactly where you needed to be.

Then life swings again. And you’re back in the fog.

That’s the pendulum. And I think learning to trust God in the downswing, when you can’t see the trail and nothing makes sense, that’s where real faith lives.

The Hardest Kind of Trust

Most of us are pretty good at doing the right thing when the path is clear. When the decision makes sense. When you can see the reward at the end of it. But that’s not trust. That’s calculation.

Courage, faith, and trust is doing the right thing even when it costs you. When the outcome is invisible. When every voice around you, and sometimes the loudest voice inside you, is saying: this isn’t working. Try something else. Take a shortcut.

I’ve felt that on mountains. Climbing blind in cloud, exhausted, can’t see the summit, can’t see the route. The only thing keeping you moving is the decision to take the next step. Not because you can see where it leads. But because stopping isn’t an option.

Life is like that more often than we’d like to admit.

We Want the Result. God Wants the Process.

We live in a world obsessed with outcomes. Metrics. Results. ROI. We want to know: if I do this, what do I get?

And honestly, that thinking has crept into how a lot of us approach faith too. We obey and then we wait for the reward. We do the right thing and expect life to get easier. We pray and look for the answer.

But what if the faithfulness is the point?

What if God is less interested in getting us to a destination and more interested in who we’re becoming on the way there?

Abraham was told to leave everything and go to a land he’d never seen. No map. No timeline. No guarantees. Just: go. And he went. That wasn’t blind stupidity. That was trust so deep it looked like madness to everyone watching.

Noah built a boat when there was no rain. Not a cloud in the sky. His neighbours must have thought he’d lost it. But he kept building. Day after day. Obedience before outcome.

Faithfulness doesn’t always look impressive. Sometimes it’s just a regular person doing a quiet, unglamorous thing that nobody understands, for longer than feels reasonable.

When Nothing Seems to Be Working

There’s a season most of us know well but rarely talk about. You’re doing everything you know to do: showing up, working hard, staying faithful, making the right calls… and nothing is moving.

The business isn’t growing. The relationship isn’t healing. The prayer you’ve been praying for months feels like it’s hitting the ceiling.

That season is tough. Not because of the pain. But because of the silence.

When things go wrong, at least you know where you stand. You can fight. You can act. But when you’re doing the right thing and nothing is happening? That makes you question everything. Am I on the right path? Have I missed something? Is anyone even listening?

I’ve been in that place. And I’ll be honest — my instinct is always the same: force the outcome. Take control. Make something happen, even if it’s the wrong something, just to break the silence. I’m a doer. I want to fix things. Waiting feels like weakness to me.

But forcing the outcome almost always makes things worse. I’ve rushed decisions that needed more time. I’ve pushed through doors that were closed for a reason. I’ve said yes to the wrong thing because I was tired of waiting for the right thing.

It’s like pulling a plant out of the soil to check if the roots are growing. The very thing you need is patience. And patience feels like doing nothing. But it isn’t.

Faithfulness in the Mundane

We love the big moments. The summit. The rescue. The breakthrough. Those make great stories. But most of life isn’t that.

Most of life is Monday morning.

It’s showing up again when you showed up yesterday and nothing changed.

That’s where obedience really gets tested. Not on the mountain. In the ordinary.

Can you be faithful when it’s boring? Can you keep doing the right thing when nobody’s watching and nobody’s clapping? Can you stay kind when you’re tired? Stay honest when cutting a corner would be so much easier?

One of the things the military taught me early on is that the people who make it through selection aren’t always the strongest or the fastest. They’re the ones who keep going when there’s no reason to keep going. When the finish line is invisible. When the only thing driving you is a quiet, stubborn decision that you’re not going to quit.

I remember a guy on selection, fitter than most of us, definitely stronger than me, who dropped out on day three. Not because his body gave up. Because his mind couldn’t handle the uncertainty. He kept asking the DS how much further. How much longer. And when they wouldn’t tell him, he was done.

The lads who passed? They stopped asking. They just walked. One foot in front of the other. No timeline. No guarantees. Just: keep moving.

That’s obedience before outcome. And it applies to way more than the military.

The Myth of the Big Moment

We’ve been conditioned to wait for the big moment. The breakthrough. The sign. The dramatic answer to prayer. And sometimes that comes. But more often, God works in the ordinary.

Think about the people in your life who’ve shaped you most. I’d bet it wasn’t one big moment. It was consistency. The parent who kept showing up. The friend who kept calling. The teacher who kept believing in you when you’d stopped believing in yourself. None of that made the headlines. None of it looked heroic at the time. But it changed everything.

That’s how most of the important stuff works. Not with a bang. Quietly. Slowly. One faithful day at a time.

Jesus said it simply: be faithful with the small things. Not: be spectacular. Not: achieve something impressive. Be faithful. With the small things. And trust that the rest is not your job.

I find that both incredibly freeing and incredibly hard.

Obedience and Ego Don’t Mix

I’ve noticed when we trust in God and things go well, we want the credit. When we put our faith in Him and things don’t go well, we want an explanation. I did my bit, God. Where’s my reward?

That’s ego. Pure and simple.

True obedience doesn’t keep score. It says: I’m going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing. Full stop. Not because it’ll work out. Not because I’ll be rewarded. Not because people will notice.

Some of the most important things we’ll ever do won’t show fruit in our lifetime. Some seeds we plant, we’ll never see grow. And that has to be okay. Because if our faithfulness depends on the outcome, it was never really faithfulness. It was a transaction.

Walking Into the Dark

There have been many times where I’ve stepped out in faith and felt completely alone. Where the right decision felt like the hardest decision and I had no guarantee it would work.

It’s hard. You’ve made the call. You believe it’s right. But there’s no applause. No confirmation. No sign from heaven saying “yes, that was the one.” Just silence. And your own doubt keeping you company.

But looking back, those moments were always the ones that mattered most. Not because they led to success. Some of them didn’t. But because they built something in me that success alone never could.

They built trust. The kind that only comes from walking into the dark and discovering, step by step, that the ground is still there.

So What Do We Do?

If you’re in this season right now, doing the right thing and seeing nothing, here’s what I’d say.

Keep going.

It’s not easy. Often it doesn’t feel good. But faithfulness is never wasted. Even when you can’t see it. Even when nobody notices. Even when the silence is deafening.

The fruit will come.

Maybe not when you expect it. Maybe not how you expect it. But it will come.

Because that’s how God works.

Not on our timeline. On His. And His timing, in my experience, is always better than ours. Even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Do the next right thing. Then do it again tomorrow.

That’s obedience before outcome.

Never Give Up!

See you next week for Part 3: When the Rope Snaps.

BG

Coming up in this series:

Part 3: When the Rope Snaps — What you find out about yourself when the thing you were counting on gives way. And what to do!

Part 4: Surrender the Controls — The daily fight to stop white-knuckling your life.

Part 5: What Remains — Strip away the title, the money, the reputation. What’s left? Who’s the real you?

Subscribe now