Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith. – Habakkuk 2:4, King James Version (KJV)

Imagine that you are stranded in the desert. You are wandering aimlessly, desperately searching for water to survive. At the brink of despair, you spot something in the distance that gives you hope. As you draw closer, your heart leaps as you see what is before you: a canteen hanging on a water pump to a well!  You rush over to the pump, and as you approach you notice a little sign on the canteen that reads:

The canteen is full of water. You are welcome to drink its contents. Before you do, however, know this. Below your feet is a well filled with fresh water that will satisfy all of your thirst, but the pump to the well must be primed with water before it will draw. There is just enough water in the canteen to prime the pump. The choice is yours: drink what you can see, or have faith that there is a never-ending water supply below.

What would you choose?

Most of the time, we choose to access only what we can see, and we fail to unlock God’s greatest riches as a result. The Bible says time and time again that the just shall live by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7, Hebrews 10:38, Habakkuk 2:4), but how often do we? In most of life’s decisions, we don’t even think about consulting God in prayer or through His Word. As a result, we make poor spousal choices, poor career choices, poor money choices, and all kinds of other poor choices. Why? Because we’d rather drink of what we can see – man’s wisdom – than take a chance on the blessings that come only from priming the pump of God’s Wisdom with our trust.

According to Biblegateway’s footnote on Habukkuk 2:4:

There is a curious passage in the Talmud [the body of Jewish civil and religious law] which says that Moses gave six hundred injunctions to the Israelites. As these commands might prove too numerous to commit to memory, David brought them down to eleven in Psalm 15. Isaiah reduced these eleven to six in [his] chapter 33:15. Micah (6:8) further reduced them to three; and Isaiah (56:1) once more brought them down to two. These two Amos (5:4) reduced to one. However, lest it might be supposed from this that God could be found only in the fulfillment of the law, Habakkuk (2:4 kjv) said, “The just shall live by his faith” (William H. Saulez, The Romance of the Hebrew Language).

The bottom line? Our ability to live a victorious Christian life is directly proportional to how much faith we have in God’s promises. The more faith we have, the more victory we enjoy. The more we doubt, the more defeat we will suffer.

Are you standing at the water pump right now? If you are, you have a choice to drink from the canteen or to trust the promise. What will it be?