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I've had the phrase "walk by faith" in my vocabulary since I was a kid in Sunday school. It's one of those verses that gets cross-stitched onto pillows and printed on coffee mugs and quoted in graduation cards. And I don't say that to be cynical β I say it because I think familiarity is one of the biggest enemies of actually understanding what a verse means.
For most of my twenties, I could quote 2 Corinthians 5:7 without thinking. But I couldn't have told you what it actually looked like on a Tuesday afternoon when I didn't know what to do next. The phrase had become wallpaper. I saw it everywhere and stopped seeing it at all.
So let me try to make it real again.
What the Verse Actually Says
"For we walk by faith, not by sight." That's the whole verse. Seven words in English, five in Greek. Paul writes it almost as a throwaway line in the middle of a longer argument about why he's not discouraged even though his body is wasting away and his circumstances are brutal.
The word for "walk" is peripateo β it means to walk around, to conduct your life, to order your daily behavior. It's not a one-time leap. It's a pattern of movement. A way of going through your days. Paul isn't describing a dramatic moment of faith. He's describing a posture that shapes every ordinary step.
And "sight" β eidos in Greek β means appearance, visible form, what something looks like from the outside. Walking by sight means making your decisions based on what you can see, measure, and control. Walking by faith means making them based on what God has said, even when the visible evidence points somewhere else entirely.
That's the tension. And it's a real one.
The Gap Between What You See and What God Says
Walking by faith is hardest in the gap. The gap is the space between the promise and the fulfillment. Between what God said and what you can currently see. Abraham lived in that gap for decades. Joseph lived in it for years in a prison cell. The disciples lived in it for three days between the cross and the empty tomb.
The gap is where faith either grows or collapses. And the gap is uncomfortable because sight β what you can see right now β is very loud. The bank account balance is loud. The medical report is loud. The relationship that isn't working is loud. Sight has receipts. Faith is asking you to trust a voice you can't always hear over all that noise.
I've been in the gap more times than I'd like to count. A season of waiting for a job that didn't come. A relationship that ended when I thought it was going somewhere. A health scare that stretched on for months with no clear answers. In every one of those seasons, walking by faith didn't feel like confidence. It felt like choosing, one day at a time, not to let what I could see be the final word.
What It Actually Looks Like Day to Day
I think we've made walking by faith sound more dramatic than it usually is. We picture it as the moment you step out of the boat like Peter, or stand before Pharaoh like Moses. And yes, sometimes it is that. But most of the time, walking by faith looks like this:
It's choosing not to catastrophize when the situation looks bad, because you know God has a longer view than you do. It's making a decision based on what you believe is right rather than what feels safest. It's staying in a hard conversation instead of running from it because you trust that God can redeem it. It's getting up and doing the next thing even when you have no idea how the larger story resolves.
It's small. It's daily. It's mostly invisible. And it accumulates into a life that looks, from the outside, like someone who has unusual peace in difficult circumstances. That peace isn't personality. It's practice.
The Proverbs 3:5 article goes deep on the trust side of this β leaning not on your own understanding is the flip side of walking by faith, and the two passages belong together.
Faith Is Not the Absence of Doubt
One of the most freeing things I ever learned about faith is that it doesn't require certainty. Doubt and faith can coexist. The father in Mark 9 said to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief" β and Jesus healed his son anyway. That's not a story about perfect faith. It's a story about honest faith.
Walking by faith doesn't mean you never look at the circumstances and feel afraid. It means you don't let the fear make the final call. You feel it, you name it, you bring it to God, and then you take the next step anyway. That's the walk. Not a triumphant march β a faithful limp, sometimes, in the right direction.
If fear is the thing that's making the walk hard right now, the Faith Over Fear article is worth reading alongside this one. The two are inseparable β you can't walk by faith while letting fear set the pace.
Staying Rooted While You Walk
There's a paradox in the Christian life that I've had to sit with: you're called to walk β to move, to step out, to go β and you're also called to be rooted. Colossians 2:6-7 says to walk in Christ, "rooted and built up in him." The walking and the rootedness aren't opposites. You can only walk far by faith if you're deeply rooted in the One you're trusting.
A tree with shallow roots falls in the first storm. A person with shallow faith collapses the first time the gap between promise and reality gets wide. The rootedness comes from Scripture, from prayer, from community, from the slow accumulation of watching God be faithful over time. It's not glamorous work. But it's what makes the walk sustainable.
The Rooted In Christ article unpacks Colossians 2 in detail β it's one of the best companion reads to this one because rootedness and walking by faith are two sides of the same life.
The Joy That Comes With the Walk
I want to say something about joy here because I think it gets left out of conversations about faith. Walking by faith is hard, yes. But it's also the only way to access a particular kind of joy that sight-based living can never produce.
Nehemiah 8:10 says "the joy of the Lord is your strength." That joy isn't circumstantial. It doesn't depend on the gap closing or the situation resolving. It's the joy of being in relationship with God, of knowing you're not walking alone, of trusting that the story ends well even when the current chapter is brutal. That joy is available in the gap. It's actually most available there, because that's where you're most dependent on God and least dependent on what you can see.
I've experienced this. The seasons of deepest faith have also been the seasons of deepest joy β not because everything was going well, but because I was walking close enough to God to feel His presence in it. That's the gift on the other side of choosing faith over sight.
A Physical Reminder for the Walk
One of the things that has helped me most in seasons of walking by faith is having physical anchors β things in my environment that pull me back to what I've decided to believe when the visible evidence is loud. A verse on the wall. A candle on the desk. Something that says, before the day gets hard, this is what I'm standing on.
The Walk By Faith Candle is one of those anchors for me. It's simple β just the verse, just the reminder. But on the days when sight is screaming and faith feels thin, lighting it is a small act of choosing which voice I'm going to listen to. That's not superstition. That's just using your environment to fight forgetfulness.
Shop the Walk By Faith Candle β
Related Reading
- What Does Walk By Faith Mean? 2 Corinthians 5:7 Explained β the verse-by-verse breakdown of the passage
- What Does Rooted In Christ Mean? β you can only walk far if you're deeply rooted
- How to Actually Live Faith Over Fear β fear and faith cannot share the driver's seat
- What Does Trust In The Lord Mean? Proverbs 3:5 Explained β leaning not on your own understanding is the other side of this coin
- Be Still and Know That I Am God β Psalm 46:10 Explained β sometimes walking by faith means stopping and being still
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "walk by faith, not by sight" mean?
It means ordering your daily life β your decisions, your responses, your direction β based on what God has said rather than what you can currently see. "Walk" in the Greek is peripateo, meaning to conduct your life. It's not a one-time leap. It's a daily pattern of trusting God's word over visible circumstances.
Is walking by faith the same as ignoring reality?
No. Walking by faith doesn't mean pretending circumstances aren't real or difficult. It means refusing to let circumstances have the final word. You see the situation clearly β and then you choose to trust what God says about it over what fear says about it. Wisdom and faith work together, not against each other.
What's the difference between faith and presumption?
Presumption is deciding what God should do and then calling it faith when you act on it. Faith is trusting what God has actually said and stepping in that direction, even when the outcome is uncertain. The difference is whether you're following God's lead or asking God to follow yours.
How do I walk by faith when I don't know what God wants me to do?
Start with what you do know. God's character doesn't change based on your circumstances. His promises don't expire. Walk in obedience to what's already clear β love well, pray honestly, stay in Scripture, serve faithfully β and trust that clarity comes to people who are already moving in the right direction.
Can faith and doubt coexist?
Yes. The father in Mark 9 said "I believe; help my unbelief" and Jesus healed his son. Honest faith that acknowledges doubt is more real than performed confidence that pretends doubt doesn't exist. God meets you where you actually are, not where you think you should be.
About the Author
Rachel Anne Mercer is a writer and Bible teacher based in North Carolina. She's been leading women's Bible studies for over fifteen years and writes about faith, doubt, and the ordinary holiness of everyday life. She's a wife, a mom of four, and a firm believer that the most important theology happens in the middle of real life β not just on Sunday mornings. She's currently working on her first book about faith in the waiting seasons.