The Bible often uses the terms, "pilgrims, sojourners, and strangers" to describe our lives on earth. (Heb. 11:13, 1 Pet. 2:11, 1 Pet. 1:17.) We are as strangers traveling in a foreign land. Our home is some where else. If we accept that we are strangers and pilgrims here, we are on "a journey of faith." Our lives down here are not always simple. We do not always journey on a straight and smooth road. It is often a winding path.

I would suggest that every character in the Bible could serve as a good illustration of a journey of faith. Some of them failed; others succeeded. Some stayed on the right path for most of their lives; others wandered from it. We are like those characters of the Bible. They are not so different from all of us. We too are on a journey of faith. This journey is not just spiritual but includes physical things (your whole life, culture, family, friends, economics, etc.).

Abraham (approx. 2000 BC)

Though Abraham lived before the Old Covenant was given, he is called the father of all who believe. The promises of God to him included both covenants. We know Abraham’s life after he was called from Haran, but we know little about his life in the Ur of the Chaldees. Did he always possess such a strong faith in God? We know that he lived in an idolatrous land. God called him from that place. He obeyed and went out not knowing where he was going.

Abraham’s life well illustrates a life of faith. He left a land of confusion religiously. His own parents and family believed in many gods. Out of those in that land, God called Abraham. He did not see most of God’s promises fulfilled, but he believed what God had promised. They all came to pass.

Like Abraham, we will be successful if we live and die believing what God has promised us. (Heb. 11:13.) We should not think that Abraham never sinned; he lied to two different kings about his wife. It seems that he feared for his life. He also participated in the scheme to produce a son with Hagar after ten years had passed waiting on God’s promise. Abraham was just a man; every man at best is still a man. But he trusted God and his faith was counted as his righteousness. (Gen. 15:6.) So is ours. (Rom. 4:24.)

Saul of Tarsus (1st century AD)

We first meet Saul in Acts 7:58. "And cast him (Stephen) out of the city and stone him. The witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul."

"And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison." (Acts 8:1,3.)

"And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues. . . . " (Acts 9:1.)

While Saul was on the road to Damascus to apprehend Christians, the Lord appeared unto him. Saul then accepted the truth that Jesus had been raised from the dead. After obeying the Gospel in Damascus, he spend the rest of his life proclaiming the faith that he once sought to destroy.

Religiously, Saul always had a great faith in God. He was trained as a zealous Pharisee under Gamaliel. He exceeded the zeal of those before him. (Gal. 1:14.) But it was a misguided zeal. He could not accept Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah. Saul had a keen mind, but he accepted the legalism of the Pharisees. He moved from persecuting others to being persecuted. He also made the tremendous shift from extreme legalism to understanding the grace of the Gospel of Christ. This journey of faith was not and is not today an easy one to make. Many of us have dealt with this transition also.

Paul once described himself this way: "Circumcised the eighth day; of the stock of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness of the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ." (Phil. 3:5-7.)

We are not told about the reaction of his family and teachers. They perhaps mocked Saul’s decision to become a Christian. He knew the kind of persecution that he could expect from his fellow Pharisees. They sought his life often. Christians were reluctant to receive him. It took a Barnabas to welcome him in the church. This journey of faith took courage and a strong independent mind. Most people would find it hard to leave the faith of their parents and friends. Muslims in their homeland find it most difficult to make that decision.

Augustine and Monica (4th century AD)

Augustine is well-known as the bishop of Hippo, north Africa. He is a complicated figure; his mother, devoted and anxious for her son’s salvation. "Augustine disliked the winter season as much as he loathed traveling. It is some measure of his changed outlook, that in his middle age both the images of traveling and of foul weather come to sum up the life of a Christian on earth." (Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown, 210.) This is his description of one’s journey of faith on earth.

We know much about the heart of Augustine from his book, Confessions, 397 AD, written when he was 43 years of age. As a young man, he lived a life of sin. He had little spiritual guidance from his father, Patricius, who was an unbeliever. His mother was devoted to the faith of the Gospel and to her son. She always believed in her children. Monica wept bitterly when one of her children went astray from God. Augustine wrote, "She acted as if she was undergoing again the pangs of child-birth." (Brown, 30.) He wrote that the "son of her tears could not be lost." (Confessions, III, xii, 21.)

Augustine wrestled with the decision to give up sin in his life. He was powerful drawn by the lusts of the flesh, and just as powerfully pulled by the faith and teachings of his beloved mother. In making this decision that everyone must make in one’s journey of faith, he wrote, "Somehow I flung myself down beneath a fig-tree and gave way to the tears which now streamed from my eyes, the sacrifice that is acceptable to you. . . For I felt that I was still the captive of my sins, and in my misery I kept crying, ‘How long shall I go on saying, Tomorrow, tomorrow?’ Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?" (Confessions, VIII, xi, 27.)

Monica had been brought up in an austere Christian family. She followed the practices of the African church. But she wanted her son to have a good education. His training in rhetoric pleased her greatly. Once some women had gathered by a stream to wash their clothes. Monica had bruises on her face from a beating that her husband, Patricius, had given her. She tried to hide her face from the other women. They pressured her to talk, but she refused denying that her husband had beaten her. She was humble, restrained, dignified and carried the burden of a non-Christian husband while trying to teach her children to live for God.

Monica’s prayers for her son were answered. Augustine did leave the way of sin to become one of the most powerful bishops of his time. He was a great sinner who became a great saint. He is still highly regarded and recognized as the father of Catholicism.

Augustine had many questions about the role of sexuality. He could not find a way to be comfortable with expressing his sexuality. He felt it to be shameful and sinful. This may be one of the reasons for the strong doctrinal views of the Catholic Church to this day (opposition to birth control measures, sex is only for procreation, etc.).

For about nine years, Augustine became a "hearer" among the Manichees. They were a strict religious group, extremists, illegal, savagely persecuted, having the aura of a secret society. Augustine was attracted to them, in part, because they had a simple answer to the problem of sin within the human heart. Since God is holy and good, from whence came this evil tendency within man? The answer was simple and drastic. It is the old doctrine of dualism and a reliance upon human reason. The first thing one must know is that these two principles, good and evil, have natures that are absolutely distinct. Augustine would later reject the dualism of the Manichees.

The greatest battle for Augustine was not the doctrinal issues, though they were important considerations. For him a Christian’s worst enemies could no longer be placed outside him. They were inside, his sins and doubts. The climax of man’s life would not be martyrdom, but conversion from the perils of his own past. (Brown, 159.)

C. S. Lewis (1898 in Belfast, Ireland - 1963)

Clive Staples Lewis’ life is an important example of the journey of faith because he was an atheist who became a fervent apologist for the faith of Christ. His most popular religious work is The Screwtape Letters, 1942, a witty satire in which an old devil advises a young devil on how to tempt men to sin. Other religious works include The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, and Mere Christianity. His autobiography of his early life is Surprised By Joy, 1955.

C. S. Lewis wrote about his childhood: "I was taught the usual things and made to say my prayers and in due time taken to church.

I naturally accepted what I was told, but I cannot remember feeling much interest in it." (Surprised By Joy, 6.)

His mother’s death by cancer was "the occasion of what some (but not I) might regard as my first religious experience." He prayed for his mother’s recovery, but to no avail. When she died, he believed that a miracle could occur bringing her to life again. He accepted the failure as a children often do. It did not immediately affect his attitude toward God. But his mother’s death, caused all that was stable, tranquil and reliable to disappear from his life. There would be occasions of joy, but no more of the old security. "It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis." (Joy, 13.)

Lewis had learned from his father an attitude about the world that would influence his thinking. His father used colorful statements to describe adult life. He said that "the best he could hope for was to avoid the workhouse by extreme exertion." Lewis saw adult life as one of drudgery and unhappiness, though most families including his own lived rather comfortable lives. Lewis was also affected by the writings of Lucretius, who wrote:

"Had God designed the world, it would not be

A world so frail and faulty as we see."

This argument is the old argument of faulty design. Yes, there is discernible design in the world, but it is not perfect design. Therefore, it cannot be of God, the unbelievers argue.

After graduating from college, Lewis taught philosophy. He relied heavily upon reason and human explanations. "Then, I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken." (Joy, 122.) Lewis believed Chesterton to be the most sensible man alive apart from his Christianity! And then in 1926, the hardest boiled of all the atheists that he had ever known sat in his room and remarked that "the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. If he the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not safe, where could I turn?" (Ibid, 123.)

Lewis described these events as "God closing in on him." What appeared to him was "a moment of wholly free choice." But he was not directly seeking for God. For him that would be like "the mouse’s search for the cat." Yet, in the spring of 1929, Lewis gave in to God and admitted Him to be God. He knelt and prayed, the "most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." He was like a prodigal brought in kicking, struggling, resentful and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape. Lewis explained that his "conversion" was only to Theism, pure and simple, not to Christianity. He knew nothing yet about the Incarnation.

Lewis would become a strong advocate for faith in God. Many doubters have been brought to faith by Lewis’ work. He did not consider himself a theologian; neither did he offer an explanation for the differences in various religious beliefs. He offered rational reasons for believing in a Supernatural Being and for the possibility of the miraculous.

Saul of Tarsus’ journey was one of a struggle with extreme legalism to the grace of the Gospel in Christ Jesus. Augustine’s journey of faith was leaving a life of sin to being a saint of God. C. S. Lewis fought the coldness of unbelief in philosophy to becoming a fervent promoter of faith in God.

We all know that Judas was one of the twelve apostles, a member of the inner circle of those being trained by Jesus for a special work in His Kingdom. He served as the treasurer for the apostles and Jesus. He carried the money bag. It was used for purchasing food and for alms to the poor. Judas was a covetous person who was overcome by his desire for money. He betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. When he realized what he had done, he went out and hanged himself.

Judas’ journey of faith ended in sadness and failure. He was not the first nor last to be overcome by the love of money. The Bible says that it is the root of all evil. (1 Tim. 6:10.)

Every person has a story of his own. You have a special story, even though it may never be printed in books for others to read. God knows the story well. He cares what is happening in your life. He wants you to choose life and blessings. (Deut. 30:19.)

Our stories will be similar to those above. We all wrestle with sin and doubt and the world. Where are you in your journey of faith?

I was impressed by the above examples by a common thread in each. There was an intensity to know and find out "the truth" about life. One of the greatest mistakes one can make is to be indifferent and not search for God. Even though, like Lewis wrote, it might be like trying to get a mouse to search for a cat. Many do not want to find God. But God wants to find us.