Unbelief

One of the things we struggle with the most is believing in God, who we can’t see or touch.

A lot of people reading this post, will have ‘belief in God’ as well as ‘unbelief in God’ at the same time.

‘Belief in God’ may include…believing God exists, believing what the Bible says about God, believing what you have heard in church about God, believing Jesus was the Son of God when He came to earth, even believing and putting your faith in what Jesus did for you and entering into a relationship with God.

However, to what extent do you believe in God?

Your ‘unbelief in God’ may manifest as:
– Making your faith in God conditional
– Believing you know best rather than God
– Rebelling against God
– Testing God
– Not giving God any of your time because you are focussed on other things
– Not following or obeying God
– Disagreeing with God
– Demanding something of God
– Being stubborn in your views about God and not being prepared to hear otherwise
– Putting up a barrier between you and God
– Dishonouring and undermining God
– Being negative about God
– Questioning God
– Being angry at God
– Treating God with contempt
– Not believing God is real, hears you, is with you
– Believing God has abandoned you and is not interested in you
– Not remembering God’s goodness and promises to you
– Letting other people influence your belief or lack of it

Any of these things will get in the way of you experiencing God for yourself.

We are all in a position of unbelief in God at some stage, both before we come into a personal relationship with God, and often afterwards as well.

The Israelites, God’s chosen people, had this same experience.

About 3500 years ago, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, when God called Moses to take the Israelites out of Egypt. The Pharaoh of Egypt refused to let them go until God sent 10 different plagues, diseases and death to Egypt. Moses led the Israelites (600,000 men without counting women or children) into the desert and the Israelites experienced first hand God’s presence and power with them, in addition to the miraculous way He intervened for them to be released from Egypt. For example, God made the Red Sea part in two so the Israelites could walk though it on dry ground, and then made it become the sea again, drowning all of the Egyptians who had pursued them to take them back to Egypt; God provided water for them when there was no water in the desert; God provided daily food on the ground for them; God was visibly with them in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And yet, time and time again, the Israelites didn’t believe God was with them, would provide for them, was leading them in a way that was best for them etc.

All of the above descriptions about unbelief comes from passages in the Bible about the Israelites. They were God’s chosen people, they knew He existed, yet they still had unbelief.

This is relayed in the New Testament of the Bible with a warning to us:

So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ” See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. (Hebrews 3:7-12)

What about you? Do you fully believe, partially believe or not believe in God? What is the basis of this? Have you really explored who God is for yourself?

To turn unbelief to belief, any expression of unbelief in God requires a personal decision to turn to God, to repent of your unbelief and to ask God to reveal Himself to you.

God says if you seek me, you will find me.

God’s response to the Israelites, who didn’t believe Him time and time again, is the same to you and I “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion”. (Numbers 14:18)

God offers you forgiveness, restoration and transformation of your unbelief to belief.

You have to want to believe and pursue getting to know God for yourself.

This reflects my personal story as well. I made a personal decision to put faith in God and what Jesus did for me about 40 years ago, when I was a child. Since that time, I have pursued to varying degrees having a real and personal relationship with God.

However, about 18 months ago, I felt something was missing. Yes, I still believed in God and have experienced Him personally in my life many times over the past 40 years, but I felt there had to be more than my current experience of ‘Christianity’. Being a Christian seemed to be an add-on feature to how I was living my life, not the true core, source and motivation of everything. I didn’t feel I was experiencing ‘abundant life’ that Jesus offers (John 10:10).

In my pursuit of getting to the root of this, I discovered that I struggled with disbelief. At the time, I journaled “Do you exist?” “Are you real?” “Are you really going to transform me?”. I acknowledged that I had doubt “This abundant life that you offer Jesus, I haven’t seen or experienced it or seen it in others”.

I had been believing the lie that God is not really who He says He is.

At that moment, I prayed “Lord, I renounce my unbelief and doubt. Show me yourself Lord” and in that moment, God came and made Himself known to me in a very real and personal way.

Today, I know God is real because of how I interact with Him, hear from Him and see Him in and around me. I am experiencing in greater measure each day the abundant life that Jesus offers.

I wrote in my journal “How do I stop doubting?” And wrote down ‘Trust, Affirm, Verbalise, Repeat’.

God is who He says He is. God is real. Believing in God, not just about God, but at a personal level, having a real, relevant, personal relationship with Him that is deeply satisfying, depends on you being prepared to believe.

Maybe like me, and like the father who brought his son who couldn’t speak and had seizures due to an impure spirit in him to Jesus to heal, you need to say “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)