The Difference Between Faith and Wishful Thinking
I want to start this morning with a question that might be the most important question I ask all year. Is what you’re calling faith actually faith or is it wishful thinking with a Bible verse attached?
Because here is what I have seen in my years of ministry. People who are devastated when prayers don’t get answered the way they expected. People who feel betrayed by God when the healing didn’t come, the relationship didn’t restore, the financial breakthrough didn’t arrive on the timeline they believed for. People who walked away from their faith not because God failed them but because they had built their faith on something that was never actually faith to begin with. And I say this not to be harsh. I say it because the distinction between genuine faith and wishful thinking is one of the most important things a Christian can understand. Because one of them holds when everything falls apart. And one of them collapses the moment circumstances stop cooperating.
This morning I want to show you the difference. And I want to show you how to build the kind of faith that holds.
Upgrade here for only $3 to get full access to Walking with Jesus and support all the time I put into this newsletter:
The Sermon:
Hebrews 11:1 is the most precise definition of faith in all of Scripture. And it is worth reading slowly enough to feel the weight of every word. “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
Two words jump out. Confidence and assurance. The Greek word for confidence is hypostasis which means substance, foundation, the underlying reality of something. Faith is not a feeling of confident expectation. It is a substance. Something solid. Something you can stand on. Not an emotion that rises and falls with circumstances but a foundation that exists independent of what is currently visible. The Greek word for assurance is elegchos which means evidence, proof, conviction. Not a guess. Not a hope that things might work out. The evidence of things not yet seen. A conviction so grounded in the character of God that it functions as proof even before the visible confirmation arrives. Put it together and here is what genuine faith actually is:
Faith is the settled conviction that what God has said is true grounded not in the outcome you’re hoping for but in the character of the God who promised.
Wishful thinking looks almost identical on the surface. It uses the same language. It quotes the same verses. It shows up at the same prayer meetings. But underneath it is built on something entirely different. Wishful thinking says: I believe God is going to give me this specific thing in this specific way on this specific timeline and my faith is the confidence that this outcome is coming.
Genuine faith says: I believe God is good, faithful, and sovereign and I am trusting Him with this situation regardless of how the outcome looks, because my confidence is in Who He is, not in what I’m expecting Him to do. The difference is the object of the faith. Wishful thinking places faith in an outcome. Genuine faith places faith in a Person.
The Hard Truth
Here is why this distinction matters more than almost anything I could preach this morning. When you place your faith in an outcome when you build your confidence on the expectation of a specific result your faith is only as strong as that expectation. The moment the outcome doesn’t arrive, the moment the timeline extends past what you believed for, the moment the answer comes back as no or not yet the faith collapses. Because the thing it was standing on is gone. But when you place your faith in the character of God in His goodness, His faithfulness, His sovereignty, His love nothing that happens to your circumstances can shake that foundation. Because the foundation is not the outcome. The foundation is God Himself. And God does not change when your circumstances do.
This is why Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could stand in front of a furnace and say: “The God we serve is able to deliver us. But even if he does not we will not bow.” Even if He does not. That is not wishful thinking. That is the most mature, most tested, most unshakeable faith in Scripture. A faith so grounded in the character of God that it does not require a specific outcome to survive. A faith that says I trust You not because I know how this ends but because I know who You are. That faith held in the fire. Because it was not built on the expectation of being removed from the fire. It was built on the God who was present in the fire with them.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
Genuine faith prays differently than wishful thinking does. Wishful thinking prays with clenched fists. It tells God what to do, when to do it, and how to do it and calls that belief. It mistakes the intensity of its desire for the certainty of the outcome. And when the outcome doesn’t match the desire it calls God unfaithful.
Genuine faith prays with open hands. It brings the desire fully and honestly Jesus did this in Gethsemane, “Take this cup from me” and then surrenders the outcome “Yet not my will but yours.” It holds the request and the trust simultaneously. It wants a specific thing and releases it to a specific God. That is not weak faith. That is the strongest faith available. Because it does not depend on the answer cooperating. It depends on the Answerer being who He says He is. And He always is. Every single time. Without exception.
The Call
I want to invite you this morning to examine what your faith is actually standing on. Not to condemn you if it has been standing on outcomes. But to invite you to something more durable. Something that holds in the fire and in the furnace and in the season when the answer doesn’t come the way you expected. Move your faith from the outcome to the Person. From what you’re expecting to Who you’re trusting. From the result you’re hoping for to the God who holds every result in His hands and is working all of them together for a good you cannot yet see.
That faith will not disappoint you. Not because every outcome will be what you hoped. But because the God it is standing on is faithful and faithfulness, in the long arc of a life surrendered to Him, never produces the kind of outcome that shame requires. Build on the Person. That foundation holds forever.
Reflection Questions
Think of a time your faith collapsed when a prayer wasn’t answered as expected. Looking back was your faith in God or in the outcome you expected from Him?
What is the difference between praying with clenched fists and praying with open hands? Which one describes how you currently pray about the biggest thing you’re carrying?
What would it look like to move your confidence from a specific outcome to the character of God in the specific situation you’re most anxious about right now?
Today’s Prayer:Lord I confess that some of what I’ve been calling faith has been wishful thinking. I have been trusting in outcomes more than in You. And when the outcomes didn’t come the way I expected my faith shook because it was standing on the wrong thing. Today I want to move my foundation. Not from the expectation of a specific result but from the settled conviction that You are good, faithful, and sovereign and that everything in my life is in the hands of Someone who can be trusted completely with all of it. Open my hands. Deepen my faith. Build it on You. Amen.
Comments