It’s been over a month since the release of The Message Women’s Devotional Bible!

What a joy to hear from women who appreciate the everyday language of The Message by Eugene Peterson—paired with character profiles and topical devotionals written by women for women. I’m grateful to be one of the 82 contributors—a diverse group of women of different backgrounds, ages, denominations, races, ethnicities, and locations.

Today I’m sharing one of my four topical devotionals that appear in The Message Women’s Devotional Bible. I don’t know all of the other contributors, but I so appreciate their voices. So, at the end of this post, I’m also sharing a short video where you can hear from them directly.

What Is Faith?

by April Yamasaki

Hebrews 11 begins with a simple definition of faith as “the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is no optional extra to put on a shelf, dust off once a week, and bring to church. Instead, we can hold on to faith as God’s generous gift to ground us, give our lives purpose, and graciously sustain us.

Faith means believing in what we can’t see: believing God exists, believing God created the world, believing God cares for us. Abel believed and gave his best to God. Enoch believed and walked with God. They put their faith into action as they placed their trust in a God they couldn’t see.

That kind of faith in action runs throughout Hebrews 11. By faith, Noah believed God and built an ark. By faith, Abraham and Sarah believed God, traveled to a new land, and became parents in their old age. By faith, Moses believed God’s call and led his people to the Promised Land. By faith, unnamed women and men endured imprisonment and torture and looked beyond their suffering to the hope of resurrection.

Their faith looked forward. Abraham and Sarah never saw their many descendants. Moses never entered the Promised Land. Those who suffered never saw the fulfillment of all God’s promises in their lifetime. Yet, by faith, they looked beyond their present circumstances. They continued to trust God by looking “way off in the distance” to the future God had in store for them (Hebrews 11:13).

In Hebrews 11, many of those commended for their faith were well-known and well-respected. Others lived on the margins of society, or on the margins of history. Each had their own story and their own challenges: facing loss and loneliness, bearing up under cruelty and lack of power, encountering many other trials.

Hebrews 11 offers just a glimpse of their faith—and a glimpse of what faith can be for us today. Faith looks beyond what is to what will be in the fullness of God’s promises. Faith is for everyone—for the well-known and the obscure, for those honored by history and those who remain unnamed, for the ancients and for you and me today.

May we take the risk of faith and trust ourselves to the great mercy and love of God. May we hold on to this faith: Whatever our present, whatever our concerns and challenges, God tenderly holds us and our futures with promise.

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Excerpted from The Message Women’s Devotional Bible © 2025 by The Navigators. Used by permission. All rights reserved.