Faith Is a Filter: Change Your Filter, Change Your Life

It doesn’t pretend the reality in front of us isn’t real. It helps us see a fuller picture—people as God sees them, circumstances through what God is doing, and the future through what God has promised.

Faith Changes What You See

Filters change a picture.

Pull up the same photo on your phone, apply a few different filters, and suddenly you notice different things. One makes the colors sharper. Another softens the edges. Another pulls something out of the background that you barely noticed before.

The objects in the picture haven’t changed. But the way you see them has.

Faith works like that.

Faith doesn’t require us to deny what’s happening in front of us. It gives us a fuller, deeper, more accurate picture of it.

Abigail’s story in 1 Samuel 25 shows exactly what that looks like.

David has been chosen by God to become Israel’s future king, but he isn’t king yet. He’s living in the wilderness with hundreds of men while running from King Saul. During that time, David and his men protect the shepherds and livestock of a wealthy man named Nabal.

When sheep-shearing season arrives—a time of celebration and abundance—David asks Nabal for some basic hospitality.

Nabal refuses. Worse, he insults David.

David is furious. He gathers hundreds of armed men and heads straight for Nabal’s household, determined to get revenge.

That’s when Abigail, Nabal’s wife, enters the story.

Everyone is looking at the same crisis. But they aren’t seeing the same picture.

Nabal is looking through the filter of self: What’s best for me? How do I keep what’s mine?

David is looking through the filter of offense: How could he do this to me? How do I make this right?

We have our own filters too. People pleasing. Anxiety. Achievement. Anger. Self-protection. Whatever our filter is, it determines what we notice, what questions we ask, and ultimately what we do.

Abigail chooses another filter.

She looks through faith.

1. Faith Changes How You See People

Nabal looks at David and sees a runaway rebel living in the wilderness.

Technically, he isn’t entirely wrong.

David is living in the wilderness. He is running from the king. But Nabal takes one slice of David’s life and makes it the whole picture.

That’s easy to do with people.

Someone disappoints you, hurts you, annoys you, or makes a mess, and suddenly that moment becomes the filter through which you see everything about them. You may not even be wrong about what happened. You’re just not seeing the whole picture.

The filter of faith asks a different question:

Lord, how do you see this person?

Abigail does that with remarkable clarity. She doesn’t ignore reality or pretend everything is sunshine and roses. But when she meets David, she doesn’t speak to him like a fugitive.

She speaks to him like a future king.

In 1 Samuel 25:23, Abigail gets off her donkey, bows before David, and begins speaking to the person God has called him to become. Again and again, she calls him “my lord.” She reminds him that God will establish his future and that his life is in God’s care.

David is acting like an angry man bent on revenge. Abigail talks to him like the king God says he is.

There are people in our lives who may need that from us too—not denial about who they are today, but eyes to see the fuller picture of who God made them to be.

Faith refuses to reduce someone to their worst moment, current season, or most frustrating trait. It asks God for his view.

2. Faith Changes How You See Your Circumstances

Abigail doesn’t just see David differently. She sees the entire crisis differently.

Hundreds of armed men are approaching her home. Her husband has created the problem. Her household is in danger. There is plenty for Abigail to panic about.

But she sees something underneath the obvious crisis.

Her concern becomes what God is doing.

She tells David that the Lord is restraining him from bloodguilt and from taking salvation into his own hands. That’s a remarkable interpretation because, at that moment, David hasn’t actually stopped yet.

Abigail sees herself as part of what God is doing to protect David from a decision that doesn’t belong in his future.

That’s what the filter of faith does. It asks:

Lord, what are you doing here?

That question doesn’t mean the circumstances aren’t real. It means the circumstances might not be the entire story.

Maybe the conflict in front of you is also an opportunity for reconciliation. Maybe the situation testing your patience is also exposing something God wants to change in you. Maybe the problem you desperately want removed is also a place where God is teaching you generosity, trust, courage, or obedience.

We can get incredibly committed to our interpretation of a situation. Faith creates enough humility to ask God whether there’s more going on.

The thing is real. But sometimes, the thing isn’t the thing.

Faith asks God to show us what he sees.

3. Faith Changes How You See the Future

Abigail talks about David’s future as if it’s already settled.

She reminds him that the Lord will establish his house. She talks about the good God has spoken over him. She points toward the day when David will lead Israel.

She brings God’s promises into the foreground and lets the current crisis fade into its proper place.

That may be the hardest part of faith.

Our circumstances are happening right now. We can see them. Feel them. Grieve them. The things God has promised may still feel far away.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Faith holds onto the conviction that there is a bigger picture. It doesn’t call the present circumstances false. It calls them incomplete.

If we want to live with hope, peace, joy, and courage in a world where painful things happen, we need this filter.

We have to choose to see the future according to the promises of God.

God Is Looking for People Who Will See Through Faith

There’s an easy-to-miss detail at the beginning of Abigail’s story.

1 Samuel 25 begins by telling us that Samuel has died.

Samuel was God’s prophet. He was even called a “seer”—someone God allowed to see what he was doing and then sent to speak his truth to others. Samuel had been the one who anointed David and helped him see the future God had chosen for him.

Then Samuel dies.

And David is about to make a catastrophic decision.

Enter Abigail.

God needs someone willing to step into this situation, see it his way, speak his truth, and remind David of his promises. Abigail is willing.

And David listens.

He recognizes that God has sent Abigail to stop him from taking revenge into his own hands. The crisis ends peacefully because one person was willing to see the situation through the filter of faith.

We can spend a lot of time wondering whether we’re the kind of person God can use. Are we the right age? Do we have the right job, education, background, gender, experience, or personality?

Abigail’s story points somewhere else.

God can use ordinary people in incredibly consequential moments when they’re willing to see what he sees.

Your problems don’t automatically disqualify you. Neither do your flaws or your past.

The invitation is to use the filter.

Ask God how he sees the person in front of you. Ask what he’s doing in circumstances you don’t understand. Bring his promises back into view when your future feels impossible to see.

The picture in front of you may not immediately change.

But through faith, you might finally see the whole thing differently.

Mark the Moment

Take one person, circumstance, or future you’re struggling to see clearly and ask the question that activates the filter of faith:

Lord, what are you doing here?

Ask him to show you the person as he sees them, the circumstance through what he’s doing, and the future through what he has promised.

Then take a step toward that reality. That’s how a life of faith moves forward.