In 1989, I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I saw it, and I immediately started asking for a fedora and a whip for my birthday. If you’re like most of the rest of the world, you saw it, too, and so you remember the pivotal scene near the end of the movie when Indy stands on the edge of what looks to be a great chasm. He must, according to the instructions he was following, take a “leap of faith.” He must step into the abyss, entrusting his life to something not seen.

He does, of course, take the step only to find that the thin bridge of rock has been there all the time, just camouflaged by the surrounding cliffs. Even if you didn’t see the movie, if you were a churchgoer, you probably heard more than one preacher use that scene in illustration about faith. And it’s not a bad one; after all: 

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1).

It was certainly a big (and literal) step of faith for Indiana Jones, and there are certainly times when faith feel like that. Stepping into nothingness. Nothing to hold onto except the unseen God. But then again, there are other times when less dramatic but not less important steps of faith are taken. What are those more unlikely expressions of faith? Here are 3 examples:

1. Sleep.

Yes, sleep. But to see how sleep is an act of faith, consider what are the kinds of things that keep us from sleeping soundly. Things like anxiety. Worry for tomorrow. Concerns about kids, or nuclear weapons, or politics or whatever. When looking at the issue like that, we begin to see how sleep is an act of faith.

The Christian can sleep soundly because we know that God never does. The world keeps on spinning and God keeps on working even without our waking knowledge. When we choose to sleep, we are also choosing to release, if even for a short time, those things to Him which we should be entrusting to Him to begin with:

“Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how” (Mark 4:24).

Such is life in the kingdom of God, the one in which we can rest knowing that God is still busy.

2. Contentment.

Contentment is no easy state in which to live. In fact, Paul claimed that it was only through the power of Jesus that he could be content in whatever the circumstances, whether living in plenty or want, whether well fed or hungry:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).

So, then, it is through faith in Jesus and His strength that we learn to be content, but what is it that we must believe? Well, we must believe in things like God’s sovereign control of circumstances outside of ours; that He portions out resources based on His love and wisdom; that nothing in which we find ourselves inside of happens by accident. When we walk in contentment, no matter the circumstances, we bear testimony of what we believe to be true about Christ and all we have in Him.

3. Steadiness.

Here, too, is an unlikely expression of faith. We tend to think of expressions of faith in terms of the grand gestures – of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing to bow before the golden idol, or Daniel accepting his fate of being thrown to the lions because of his refusal to stop praying. Those grand acts of faith are true and good and right.

But so is the faith that leads someone to walk steadily through life. Faith fuels not only the sprinter, but the plodder who is able to take what comes with a spirit of joy and peace and react calmly in the face of it. In fact, a steady pace is the outworking of a contented heart because the same things we must believe in order to be content are what we must believe in order to calmly, but persistently, keep moving forward.

Yes, there are big moments of faith in everyone’s life. But let’s not wait on those. Let’s remember that faith is behind even the small moments of our lives. And therefore we can do things like sleep, be content, and walk steadily forward.