The Hall of Faith: Lessons from Hebrews 11

Is your faith running low? Pastor Linda Reese has a simple prescription, and she gave it in this message from November 16, 2025: go to Hebrews 11 and stay there a while. “If you are weak on your faith, get to Hebrews 11 and start reading. Stay there a long time. Keep reading until you get what you need.”

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1 (KJV)

You already know how to hope for what you cannot see

She made the opening verse ordinary before she made it holy. Think how much of a life is spent sure of something you cannot yet see. A teenager counting down to a driver’s licence. A young adult waiting to have a place of their own. Someone looking forward to retirement, who then finds they are busier than when they worked.

She included herself. She would like to take another cruise, ten or twelve days, and has no idea when. Maybe 2026, maybe 2027. She cannot see it and has no evidence for it, and she is still looking forward to it. That, she said, is the shape of the thing Hebrews is describing.

Abel: it was the attitude, not the animal

Adam and Eve had two sons. Abel kept sheep, Cain worked the ground, and God accepted one offering and not the other (Hebrews 11:4). Pastor Linda noted the blood sacrifice mattered, but put the weight somewhere else: what made Abel’s offering acceptable was the attitude he brought with it. Centuries on, he is still being talked about because of his faith.

Enoch: close enough that God simply took him

Enoch walked with God for three hundred years after his son Methuselah was born, and then he was gone (Hebrews 11:5). He did not die the way the rest of us die. God took him.

What she drew out of it was intimacy. Enoch kept constant communication with God and stayed pointed in His direction, and that closeness is what the rest of us are invited into. She added, with some delight, that Enoch was the father of the oldest man in the Bible.

Noah: building for weather nobody had seen

God told Noah to build, gave him the measurements, and told him it was going to rain (Hebrews 11:7). There had never been rain. Pastor Linda imagined the neighbours: people came up to Noah and told him he was crazy. What is rain? Noah probably could not have explained it either. He just kept building, and building, and building, because God had said so.

That is obedience without a forecast, and it is the part most of us find hardest.

Abraham: leaving without an address

Abraham was told to pack up and go to a land he would be shown. He did not know where it was, how far it was, or how long it would take (Hebrews 11:8–10). He had to choose between the security of what he already had and the uncertainty of travelling under God’s directions, and he lived in a tent in the land he had been promised, waiting for a city with foundations.

Pastor Linda turned it on the room: what if God told you to pack up and leave and did not tell you exactly where you were going? Would you trust that He had chosen the right place?

Then Mount Moriah. At the bottom of the hill Abraham told the servants to wait, because we will come back to you. He meant it. He believed that if he went through with it, God could raise Isaac again (Hebrews 11:17–19). Her question was short: do we have that much faith?

Moses: hidden for three months, then a basket

Israel was growing, so the order went out to kill the baby boys. Moses’ mother knew God had something for this child and hid him for three months (Hebrews 11:23). Pastor Linda asked the room to sit with that: could you keep a newborn hidden for three months and make sure nobody ever heard him cry? When she could hide him no longer she made a basket strong enough to float, set him in the river, and posted his sister to watch.

Grown, Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and chose to be mistreated with God’s people instead of enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season (Hebrews 11:24–27). The line she lingered on: he endured, “as seeing him who is invisible.”

What to do when your faith is thin

Not one of these people had the whole picture. Abel had an attitude, Enoch had a habit, Noah had an instruction, Abraham had a direction, Moses had a conviction. They all died without receiving what was promised, saw it from a distance, and called themselves strangers here (Hebrews 11:13).

So take the prescription. Open Hebrews 11 and read it slowly, and keep reading until something in it does its work on you.

Related messages: True Faith That Moves Mountains, Don’t Let Fear Stop You and Having Faith in Hard Times.

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